


No Map

by orphan_account



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Eventual Romance, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-18
Updated: 2010-09-18
Packaged: 2019-04-19 20:09:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 57,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14244813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A few years after leaving Lima, Quinn and Rachel are both dating other people. Then they get reacquainted and become friends. Then they become more than friends. That’s the entire story.Faberry, in which initially they're both with original male characters.This is also known as the story in which everyone thought I was being a cocktease over the lack of angst. Angst meter: Medium***Yes, they start out with men. Yes, I know lesbians exist in the world. So do bisexual women.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title: No Map  
> Author: Sulkygeek  
> Rating: R  
> Length: 57,938 total(eight parts). This part: 6954  
> Spoilers: Through Journey
> 
> P.S. Yes, this story ends happily. No, no one is murdered, sexually abused, physically abused, abducted by aliens, maimed and/or disfigured, goes blind, gets cancer, gets amnesia, diagnosed with some debilitating illness, etc. In addition, no one stops a wedding in progress, misunderstands/mishears a comment and then unreasonably freaks out or loses a hand to an alligator. Thank you. Someone does get food poisoning though, which I know I already did in some other story, but whatever. This story will NOT MAKE ANYONE CRY. (I hope). This story is mostly lacking in angst. Seriously.
> 
> Chapter 1: Bastard coated bastards with bastard filling is stolen from Scrubs.
> 
> Chapter 4: “So’s your face always makes sense” was shamelessly stolen from an episode of Scrubs

 

  
Rachel Berry was one of those people who just sort of disappeared after high school. If Rachel weren’t an actress, she’d undoubtedly be one of those people who her former classmate idly wondered about during incidental encounters with one another or when people who kept in touch with one another exchanged an email, texted or talked on the phone.

Quinn didn’t know _anyone_ from McKinley who remained in touch with Rachel-- but five years after graduating from high school, most people still knew _of_ Rachel. She wasn’t one of those people who slipped from the collective memory of McKinley’s graduating class of 2012, having been fairly memorable. The more famous Rachel got, the more Lima seemed to want to reclaim her as the hometown girl made good.

Rachel’s life was pretty well known now. She had a few parts in plays which led into a few guest spots on TV shows which led into a few parts in movies-- all of which happened while she was a student at Julliard. The good fortune and popularity that eluded her in high school seemed to hit Rachel in one big wave. And now at the age of twenty-two, just a year out of Julliard, she was on Broadway playing Maureen in a revival of _RENT_. Rachel’s personal life seemed to be going as smoothly as her professional life-- since meeting him as a seventeen year old freshman at Julliard, Rachel had been dating Rex Donovan, a fairly well-known actor, eighteen years her senior. They’d dated for the past five years, but it was only in the last two years that people stopped referring to Rachel as a ‘starfucker’ and realized Rachel was a talented actress and singer in her own right.

Puck mentioned it to Quinn once, just in passing, full of disdain, derision and disgust about how it was gross Rachel was with someone so old and Rex was just lucky he wasn’t in jail for statutory rape. Quinn thought it was hilarious, especially considering Puck still had a thing for cougars, the way he had in high school.

“Well, she was like, three months away from turning eighteen when she met him,” Quinn pointed out. “And they claim they waited until after she was eighteen to date.”

“It’s still gross,” Puck insisted.

So Quinn had an idea of what was going on in Rachel’s life, even if it’d been half a decade since she actually laid eyes on the brunette.

The last time they saw or spoke to each other was at the McKinley graduation when they happened to be near one another after walking around and congratulating their fellow classmates. Most of their classmates were in proximity to their parents, but Rachel’s fathers were nowhere to be seen.

“Well,” Quinn said, as she stopped in front of the brunette for a moment. “Congratulations.”

“Yes,” Rachel said. “You, too.”

And that was that.

Quinn saw Rachel here and there around town for few weeks after graduation, but Rachel always seemed harried and in a rush. She didn’t see Rachel at all past the first of July, and then Quinn traded in Ohio for California and left all thoughts of Rachel Berry behind.

Until now.

It’d been years since she last laid eyes on Rachel and so seeing Rachel sitting cross-legged in the children’s section of a bookstore whilst reading a magazine on a Thursday evening after so much time had passed was completely unexpected.

Quinn had to blink and squint a few times before she confirmed to herself that the brunette she was seeing was indeed Rachel Berry. She contemplated just walking away-- after all, she and Rachel were never friends and what the hell would it do to talk to Rachel now? But it also felt weird to walk away when she just spent at least five minutes surreptitiously staring, especially since Rachel just happened to look up at that precise moment and was now squinting and staring at Quinn as well.

Quinn sighed and approached Rachel.

“Hi,” she said. “Rachel? I thought that was you.”

Rachel paused and stared up at Quinn for a few silent moments. She blinked twice. It took her a moment to place Quinn-- the blonde was familiar, of course, but it’d been five years since she’d seen the blonde and she was completely out of context. But then it hit her. She stood up and plastered a smile to her face.

“Quinn,” she said in deliberately lazy tones. “Hello, how are you?”

They moved toward one another, arms reaching awkwardly out to one another because it felt customary to hug at this juncture as social convention tended to dictate that sort of thing. Rachel was used to fake hugs and cheek kisses-- she went to a lot of parties with her boyfriend where they ran into a lot of familiar people with whom she shared little to no history, but they treated each other with the affectionate physicality of old, familiar friends. Still this felt particularly false. The hug only lasted a few seconds and then Rachel quickly pulled away.

“How are you?” Rachel repeated.

Quinn smiled. “Fine,” she said. “You?”

“Fine.”

They looked at one another awkwardly for a few moments, each of them uneasy and hoping the other would say something even if it was just ‘okay, nice seeing you, bye.’ But neither of them did.

“So, what are you up to lately?” Quinn asked, embarrassed for herself that she actually already knew. It’s not that she routinely Googled Rachel or anything (she _didn’t_ ), but when she signed out of her hotmail account, it took her to the main MSN page and Rex Donovan was occasionally featured on it, and lately, every article featuring Rex Donovan tended to mention Rachel. Rachel’s career was on a huge upswing.

“Oh, you know,” Rachel said, somewhat dismissively. “Work.” She paused as she tried to remember back to high school and her left eye squinted a bit as she attempted to recall where Quinn had gone to college. She vaguely recalled something about UCLA or UCSD, but back then, she’d had a lot of other more pressing concerns than where Quinn Fabray was going to college. “And you?” she asked politely.

“School,” Quinn said wryly. “I’m at Columbia now for the dual JD and MBA program.”

Rachel was duly impressed. “Wow”

Quinn smiled crookedly. “Not wow. Just stressful. At least I just finished my first year.”

“Yeah, and 1L is the most challenging.”

“Right.”

It was awkward again and so Rachel glanced at her watch. It was a silver Movado watch which Rex had given her for an eighteenth birthday/Hanukkah present. Back then, it felt like a little much-- they’d only known each other for a few months, but now it was kind of comforting, because it was sturdy and reliable, but attractive to look at-- a lot like Rex himself. The watch never quite fit her right-- she had abnormally small wrists which made well-fitting bracelets and watches impossible to find. He’d insisted for years they take it to get fitted, but she always joked that she preferred it to be pretty loose in case she ever gained a massive amount of weight. She wasn’t planning on it or anything, and in actuality, she was just too lazy to get the watched adjusted. But she didn’t want to believe that any gift he gave her would require so much modification. It was kind of ridiculous, but it was just how she felt.

Quinn glanced at Rachel’s wrist. “That watch is a little big for you,” she noted.

Rachel blushed. “Yes,” she acknowledged. “But I like it.” She gave Quinn a small smile and changed the topic. “Didn’t you go to college in California?”

“Yeah, at UCSD. I’ve been out here for a year now, you know for school.”

“Change of pace,” Rachel commented idly. She’d filmed a movie in San Diego a few years ago during the summer break between her sophomore and junior year in college. San Diego was pretty and all, and Rachel liked the beach, but it was too mellow and laidback for her. Even its downtown lacked the frenetic energy she craved.

“I like it though,” Quinn said. “Here when I’m up until 4am studying and I get a sudden hankering for Thai food, I can get it.”

Rachel chuckled. “Right.” She checked her watch again. “I have to go,” she said a little apologetically. “I’m supposed to meet my boyfriend in fifteen minutes and I’m thirty minutes away. He does not appreciate tardiness.”

Quinn suppressed the urge to make a joke about how Rex Donovan likely did not appreciate tardiness because he was so old that he really didn’t have much time on earth left. But the truth was, he was only 40 and known for his vitality. And she really didn’t know what kind of name was Rex anyway. It almost sounded made up, except that the poor guy’s full name was Rexford Aloyssius Donovan (and he was a third).

“Well,” Quinn said. “It was good to see you.”

“Yes, you too.”

Quinn thought about asking Rachel for her phone number or giving Rachel hers-- it was customary to exchange numbers during encounters like this, wasn’t it? But Quinn wasn’t sure she really wanted to do either of those things.

“Bye Quinn.”

“Bye Rachel.”

They stared at one another for a moment and then Rachel gave a small smile and a wave and left hurriedly because Rex really did hate tardiness. She was a punctual person by nature, but he took punctuality to an entirely different level and while he wouldn’t scold her or anything over being late, she thought there were plenty of other things outside of her control that upset him, so she should at least try her best to make him happy over things that were well within her control.

Rachel resisted saying ‘see you later’ the way many people did to people they were unlikely to see again because she really had no intent on talking to or seeing Quinn again.

One of the perks about living in New York City was that it was just far enough away from her hometown that running into people from Lima was highly unlikely. Her time in Lima did not hold pleasant memories for her, and Quinn Fabray in particular, had made high school especially unbearable, at least during the first two years. They’d reached an unspoken truce during the last two years, but that didn’t make high school any easier for Rachel.

She didn’t think about high school much-- in all honesty, it barely registered now because she had a whole other slew of jerks to deal with, and she had to make nice with them because the acting community on both coasts was pretty small.

She was focused on her career and her relationship with Rex and she didn’t have much going on her life, but that was okay with her because what she had in her life was _good_. She left Lima and its occupants far behind and she had _no_ intent on reconnecting with _anyone_ from Lima. She didn’t talk to _anyone_ and she liked it that way.

Rachel walked away from Quinn and she didn’t look back.

\--

Rachel wasn’t someone who considered herself as having a lot of friends, but she had a better handle on the idea of friendship and at playing at being friends than when she was in high school. She didn’t automatically assume that she was friends with someone just because they spent a lot of time together or because _she_ felt like they’d bonded over a shared experience. However, the people she knew now were prone to putting their arms around her, kissing her cheek and pulling her body close to theirs when they posed for photographs. She was okay with it-- it was all part of what she signed up for, but she just wished the boundaries were a little more distinct and that it was a little easier to tell when someone wanted to be her friend and when someone was just putting on a show for the media. She still had a hard time being able to tell and so she tended to assume that the ‘friendships’ were just for show, and not for real.

She tended to let the other person dictate their relationship-- she didn’t suggest lunches, dinners, happy hours or that sort of thing. She let the other person extend the invitation because she didn’t want to assume that anyone _wanted_ to hang out with her. And she found that she was a pretty good chameleon because she could just sort of blend into the relationship-- if the other person was serious, she was serious. If the other person was playful, she was playful.

Hannah Harper was a classmate from Julliard with whom Rachel still maintained regular contact. Hannah was a few years ahead of her in school and somewhere in the intervening three years since graduating from college, Hannah changed her mind about pursuing Broadway dreams and had completely changed the course of her career.

When Hannah invited Rachel to a housewarming at her new apartment, Rachel wasn’t particularly enthusiastic. Her reluctance was mostly due to exhaustion-- _RENT_ was just as popular this time around as when it first came to Broadway and months of putting on ten shows a week were taking their toll on her, despite the fact she really loved what she was doing.

But Hannah practically begged her, and so Rachel acquiesced and dragged Rex along, who seemed more enthused about going than she did.

“Hey,” Rachel greeted Hannah with a warm smile. “Oh,” she said as Hannah abruptly grabbed her into a hug and rocked her to and fro. “Hey,” she said in surprise.

“Hey Rachel!” Hannah chirped.

Rachel looked at the glassy-eyed expression and realized Hannah was definitely buzzed.

“Hey Rex,” Hannah greeted.

“Hi Hannah,” Rex said, greeting Hannah with a kiss to the cheek.

Rachel passed Hannah the gift card from Williams-Sonoma. “Sorry,” Rachel said apologetically. “I know the gift card is impersonal, but I am not adept at choosing gifts.”

Hannah chuckled. “Thank you!” she exclaimed. “You didn’t have to.”

Rachel smiled. “Isn’t it traditional to bring some kind of a gift to these things?”

Hannah rolled her eyes and slapped Rachel’s arm. “You’re so weird and proper with your ‘isn’t it traditional’ thing,” she said, shaking her head. She linked arms with Rachel. “Let me introduce you to my friends from law school,” she said, dragging Rachel along. “Once they meet the infamous Rachel Berry, they’ll have to believe me when they say I used to act.”

Rachel laughed. “I thought being a good actor is a plus for a lawyer. And anyway, they could just check your IMDB and IBDB page.”

“God, you take all the joy out of social interaction with your practicality,” Hannah sighed. “Come on,” she said. “Come with me.”

Rachel felt herself dragged along and she glanced over her shoulder to apologetically look back at Rex who winked and blew her a kiss. She watched as he ran his hand through his dark hair and then turned to walk into the kitchen to grab a drink.

“I’m still in school, so I’m still learning how to be one.”

Rachel chuckled. “Aren’t you done with school _yet_? You could not pay me to go back to school at this juncture in my life, probably ever.”

Hannah shrugged. “I gotta have some kind of skill set. At least my acting skills will come in handy in the courtroom.” She made a face. “If I ever get into the courtroom, because I’m thinking of dropping out of law school and going to culinary school instead.”

Rachel chuckled. “Well, the world could always do with one more chef and one less lawyer.”

Hannah laughed and swatted at Rachel’s arm and continued with the introductions.

Hannah was so social, it was dizzying. This wasn’t a house-warming party, this was _Babylon_. She was introduced to Hannah’s friends from high school, friends from Julliard, friends from law school, friends from the gym, the optometrist-- everyone and anyone who Hannah had regular contact with seemed to be at this party.

Now that Rachel was a little older, she was a little better at faking rapport and making nice with people and keeping comments to herself. But she wasn’t _comfortable_ with it and she felt a pang of envy for Rex who didn’t need someone to take him by the arm and introduce him around-- he just knew how to work a room. He knew a lot of people at the party, too, of course-- many of them were actors and he had a good memory, so he could remember people he’d worked with _years_ ago, even when they were glorified extras with one line of dialogue.

People approached her, too, but it was always timidly. She had kind of a reputation for being a little standoffish, but she didn’t mean to be-- she just tended to stay quiet rather than speak because she’d long figured out that she _annoyed_ people, and she was less likely to annoy people if she just kept her mouth shut.

“She’s just shy,” Rex always defended when he gave interviews, but that didn’t stop her cold fish reputation.

“I’m socially inept,” Rachel always corrected him when the article was published or when the interview aired. She bemoaned her lack of social skill. “I think I’m borderline Asperger’s.”

She really never could tell if people genuinely liked her or not. She tended to err on the side of caution by assuming they didn’t.

“You do _not_ have Asperger’s,” he said. “Or else you wouldn’t be able to fake it. Look, you definitely have a touch of social anxiety, but mostly it’s because your career is new and on the upswing, so it’s hard for you to tell the difference between people who are genuine and people who just want to get to know you because you’re famous--”

“I’m not famous!”

“Well, you’re getting there. You just have a hard time weeding out the good people from the assholes, so you just clump them all in the asshole category, but it’s okay because you’re nice to _everyone_. It’s okay you can’t tell the difference yet, it’s a skill that will come with time and then you’ll find that you’ll feel less awkward.”

She tried to tell him it was a skill she _never_ possessed, but it was pointless. He just couldn’t see her the way she saw herself and she just couldn’t make him understand her.

After all, _he_ never needed to hide in the bathroom because he got overwhelmed by all the people and the need to put on a happy face. She was taking a few deep breaths when Hannah knocked on the door.

“Rach?”

Rachel opened the door and Hannah came inside. She shut and re-locked the door behind her. She smiled at Rachel.

“Hey,” Hannah drawled. She was definitely drunk because her blonde bangs got into her eyes and instead of brushing them aside like a normal person, Hannah rolled her eyeballs upward and began trying to _blow_ her bangs away.

Rachel laughed softly. “Hannah, just use your hand.”

“But I’m lazy.”

Rachel shook her head. “I think that takes indolence to an entirely different level.”

Hannah grinned. “I forgot that these big parties aren’t your thing,” she admitted. “I’m surprised you even came. Did you feel obliged or something?”

Rachel smiled crookedly. “Well, it’s been a while since I saw you.” She paused. “Why, did you feel obliged to invite me?” The words were teasing, joking, but she actually wondered if that were true or not. But then again, Hannah practically begged her to come.

Hannah laughed. “Don’t be low self-esteemy,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I saw you come in here a while ago. If you don’t come out, people are going to think you have a drug problem.”

“Or maybe an intestinal problem,” Rachel joked.

Hannah laughed again. “Friend, you have to _eat_ to have an intestinal problem and no one thinks you do. I think more people would believe drug problem.”

Rachel scowled. “Why is that? People with drug problems are _extremely_ unreliable, and though I acknowledge I may not be the easiest person with whom to work, I am very reliable and religiously punctual and--”

Hannah pressed a finger over Rachel’s lips. “I was making a joke about your skinny, scrawny ass not a joke about your cold fish reputation.”

“I’m not a cold fish,” Rachel refuted with a frown, because that reputation actually did sort of hurt. She did her best to be polite, so she didn’t have a reputation for being a diva or anything, but she was surprised by how her efforts to be un-annoying just ended up giving her a reputation for being _cold_. What the hell was that? She just couldn’t win.

Hannah seemed to sense that Rachel was genuinely upset because she wrapped her arms around Rachel’s waist and pressed a kiss to Rachel’s cheek. “You aren’t,” Hannah agreed, before she pulled back and patted Rachel’s shoulder. “Fuck people, most people are bastard coated bastards with bastard filling with asshole frosting and shithole sprinkles.”  
  
Rachel made a face. “That sounds like the worst pastry, ever.”

“Come on,” Hannah said. “You’re done in here, right? Come back out to my party.”

“Sure.”

They stepped out and Rachel caught a glimpse of Rex taking shots with some of the other partygoers. Rachel shook her head. Rex was such a _boy_ sometimes. He’d never went to college, so he never went to fraternity parties where that sort of behavior was par for the course, but he was an actor who’d worked steadily since he was fifteen years old and so it wasn’t as though he’d ever lacked an excuse to take shots.

Hannah took Rachel by the arm and walked with her. “Hey, you’re from Ohio, right?”

Rachel made a face. “Not anymore, I’m not.”

“There’s a girl from school who is from Ohio, too. I just saw her come in. Do you think you know her?”

Rachel snorted and rolled her eyes. This happened to her all the time. Everyone just assumed anyone from Ohio knew one another.

“It’s a small state, but it’s not _that_ small. I haven’t checked the most recent census figures or anything, but I highly doubt I’d know everyone in the state of Ohio.”

“Well, what about people in the 18-30 range?” Hannah joked. “Doesn’t that narrow it down substantially?”

Rachel shook her head. “I guarantee you with almost absolute certainty that I do not know this girl from your--”

“Quinn!”

Rachel sighed. Leave it to Quinn Fabray to completely sabotage her point.

\--

“Quinn, Rachel. Rachel, Quinn,” Hannah introduced.

“Hey Quinn.”

“Hey Rachel.”

Hannah looked at Rachel and then at Quinn. “Do you guys know each other?”

“Yes,” Quinn and Rachel grudgingly admitted in unison.

“Ha!”

Rachel scowled. “This doesn’t mean I know everyone in Ohio!”

“But it’s not so statistically improbable!”

“Yes, it is!”

“But you know her!”

“That proves nothing!”

“It proves it’s not so statistically improbable!”

“It’s highly statistically improbable! It borders on curious statistical anomaly!”

“Curious statistical anomaly?! Are you insane? Where do you come up with this stuff? And it’s not in any way anomalous! Ohio is a goddamn small state! My ass is bigger than Ohio is!”

“Your head is--”

“Ladies!” Quinn interrupted. “You’re both pretty.”

Rachel pouted and Hannah looked surly.

“Sorry,” they both muttered.

Quinn passed Hannah a gift card. “Here, it’s a gift card. I know it’s impersonal, but I’m not good at picking out gifts.”

Hannah raised an eyebrow. “Déjà vu,” she remarked with a grin. She took the gift card. “Thank you, but you really didn’t have to.”

“I think I’m _supposed_ to, you know, etiquette and Emily Post and all,” Quinn said with a laugh. She frowned. “What was that thing about déjà vu?” she asked. “Are you sure you know what it means? Because I just got here and I know I’ve never had this discussion with you before.”

Hannah rolled her eyes. “I know what it means!” she exclaimed, appearing a little offended. “It’s just that this one said the same thing about gift cards and her lack of gift selecting ability,” Hannah said, bumping Rachel’s hip with her own. “You guys are practically soul twins,” she said with a grin. She peered closely at Quinn. “Hey,” she said. “Where’s Ethan?”

“He’s meeting me,” Quinn said, explaining her boyfriend’s absence from her side. “He’ll drop by after he gets off work.”

“Oh,” Hannah said.

Rachel searched for her boyfriend and saw Rex downing another shot of alcohol. She used that as an excuse to take her leave. “I should get Rex some water,” she said, scrambling away.

“Her boyfriend, Rex Donovan,” Hannah explained.

“I know who he is,” Quinn said softly.

“I guess we all do,” Hannah chuckled. She shook her head. “Rex and Rachel, it sounds like some kind of soap opera super couple, right?” She paused. “They could be Rachex!”

Quinn shook her head. “That sounds like a discontinued cleaning product from the 1950s.”

“Yeah,” Hannah acknowledged with a guffaw. “The kind that was linked to a rise in birth defects or cancer or something.”

Quinn laughed. “Exactly.”

They watched as Rachel returned from the kitchen with a red plastic cup filled with water. Rachel approached her boyfriend and put her hand on his back, drawing his attention. He turned and grinned at her, putting his arm around her shoulders and pulling her in. He was six foot four to her five foot two, but their height difference was somewhat mitigated by her four inch heels. He continued to chat with the people he was speaking to before Rachel brought him the cup of water. Rachel leaned into him, resting her head against him and putting an arm around his waist. She smiled at the other people, but didn’t join in on the conversation.

\--

Rachel crept into the bathroom and checked to make sure the bathtub was dry before she climbed inside. She was feeling overwhelmed again-- there were even more people around now. People just seemed to arrive and not _leave_ and she was being reunited with old classmates, former cast members and other people she’d worked with over the years. Some of Hannah and Quinn’s classmates seemed to be fans of her or Rex or _both_ and she was just getting increasingly anxious from having to put on her public persona. There were just too many people in a really small space and she just couldn’t breathe.

Rex told her she had more than a touch of social anxiety, and she had to concede that. But it wasn’t social anxiety the way people traditionally thought about it-- she just got tired of being someone other than herself when she was _supposed_ to be herself and she was anxious that actually being herself would ruin everything for her. Her fathers had died in high school and she spent a lot of time alone after it initially happened in self-imposed exile. Once she emerged, she just found it hard to relate to people, something she’d _always_ had a hard time doing. She was getting better at it, especially because of Rex, who was always taking her out so that she _had_ to deal with other people. But sometimes she just needed some time alone and she needed a place where she could decompress a little-- Hannah’s bathtub seemed like as good a place as any because she doubted anyone would look there.

She’d stopped in Hannah’s bedroom where all the coats and purses were being kept and retrieved her iPod before climbing into Hannah’s bathtub. She popped in her earbuds because she did _not_ want to hear anyone pee or do other things. She didn’t want to invade Hannah’s bedroom-- that just seemed wrong to her, but she still wanted to be out of the public eye.

She wished she could just leave, but Rex wanted to stay since he was having a good time and they’d driven to the party. He likely didn’t anticipate drinking so much, but they’d need to get the car back to their apartment somehow, and so Rachel was resigned to staying until he was ready to go home so that she could drive the car back.

She lay in the tub and watched _The Nightmare Before Christmas_ on her iPod, glad that her iPod was fully charged. She kept the light in the bathroom on, because she didn’t want to explain why she was sitting in the dark just in case someone came across her-- that would be pretty hard to explain. She was half-tempted to sing along to ‘Sally’s Song,’ but she resisted.

She watched for a few more minutes when she felt someone step into the tub, a foot slamming right into her stomach.

She shrieked and sat up so quickly that the earbuds were pulled from her ears.

The other person shrieked and leaped back and given the flash of blonde hair, Rachel just assumed that it was Hannah, although why Hannah would be stepping into her tub, fully clothed with her shoes on, at her own party was a mystery.

“Hannah!”

“It’s not Hannah!” Quinn stepped closer to the tub and peered down. “Rachel! What the hell?”

Rachel flushed. “Hi Quinn.”

It’d been three months since she encountered Quinn at Barnes and Noble and now Rachel was sitting on her ass, fully clothed, in the bathtub at the housewarming party of a mutual friend, looking like a total freak. She’d been so invested in the movie, she never heard the curtain being moved aside.

“What are you doing?”

Rachel thought about an excuse she could proffer, something that would be even remotely believable, but she couldn’t think of one-- at all.

“I’m hiding,” Rachel admitted glumly. “Wait, what are _you_ doing? Why weren’t you looking where you were stepping when you shifted my internal organs around with your foot?”

Quinn scowled. “I was checking over my shoulder to see if anyone was coming in, you freak!” she exclaimed. “Move over, I’m hiding, too.”

“No way,” Rachel said, “this tub only comfortably fits one person. You can hide in the cabinet or something.”

“You’re smaller than I am, you can fit in there even without moving stuff around. You hide in there.”

“I was here first,” Rachel huffed.

Quinn stepped into the tub, ignoring the way Rachel protested.

“What?” Quinn demanded. “If we both sit up, we have enough room, you don’t have to lay down.”

“Fine!” Rachel groused. She scooted over and made room.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

There was a moment of silence.

“It’s your fault I have to stay anyway,” Quinn said.

Rachel looked at her incredulously. “How is it my fault?” she demanded crossly, hating the way Quinn made her feel like the high school reject that got Slushied by everyone and anyone.

“Your stupid boyfriend and my stupid boyfriend are bonding over a shared love of Macallan 17. Rex had a bottle in his car that apparently you guys bought before you got here and now the two of them are out on the balcony drinking it together like they’re on a date or something.”

Rachel made a face. “You’re letting them?!” she squeaked. God, he was going to be _so_ drunk.

“I don’t know about yours, but my boyfriend doesn’t listen to me when I tell him to ease up. But my boyfriend’s twenty-eight, so at least he kind of has an excuse. _Your_ boyfriend is well-known for being a Manchild.”

Quinn knew she was being a hostile asshole, but she was just so _annoyed_ with Ethan. He was usually so responsible and pediatricians totally made good boyfriends. But once he got into male bonding mode, who the hell knew what he did.

Rachel slunk down. “Yeah, okay,” she muttered.

Quinn glanced at the iPod that Rachel was holding in her hand. “Are you watching a movie?”

“ _The Nightmare Before Christmas_.”

“Oh, because it’s two weeks away from Halloween. That’s very thematic.”

Rachel chuckled. “Yes.”

“Can I share?”

“Yes,” Rachel said, passing Quinn her left earbud and keeping her right one.

They finished watching _The Nightmare Before Christmas_. Several people came in to use the bathroom and each time Quinn and Rachel looked at one another, one index finger raised to their lips and the other index fingers placed in the ear which was not occupied by an earbud to block out undesirable sounds. A few times one of them had to climb out of the tub to turn the lights back on when someone exiting the bathroom practiced good appropriate energy conservation and turned the light off.

“I didn’t have this problem when you weren’t here,” Rachel griped once they were alone again, meaning the need to plug her other ear sometimes to block out the sounds of other people’s bodily functions. She didn’t think it was unreasonable not to want to hear other people pee.

“Well, too bad, because I want to hide just as much as you do.”

“Why do _you_ want to hide?” Rachel demanded. She thought Quinn was good at these sort of things.

“I wanted to go home, like, two hours ago. But Ethan’s a pediatrician and he doesn’t have a lot of time off, so when he does get to go out, he likes to _stay_ out and I don’t want to whine about it. I’m just tired and all I really want to do is go home and study.” She paused. “Why do _you_ want to hide? Aren’t you used to big parties like this since you’re this big actress now?”

Rachel shrugged. “No.”

Quinn expected Rachel to elaborate, but the brunette didn’t.

Quinn nudged Rachel’s knee with her own. “Don’t tell me Rachel Berry, the girl in all the yearbook photos, has social phobias now,” she teased.

Rachel gave Quinn a small smile, deftly becoming the girl she tried to be now, rather than the girl she used to be. “I’m just feeling a little reclusive tonight,” she said smoothly. She gave Quinn a wide smile. “But it’s nothing a good night’s sleep can’t fix.”

Quinn seemed to fall for it, because the blonde’s smiled back. “Sleep. I don’t even know what that’s like.”

Rachel chuckled. “I would imagine the life of a Columbia student in the dual JD and MBA program would be very time-consuming.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said, wondering why Rachel’s voice suddenly seemed, like, an octave lower and much calmer.

They were watching _Breakfast at Tiffany’s_ on the iPod when the curtain slid open. Hannah stared down at them, smiling crookedly.

“Is this an Ohio thing?” Hannah asked. She spoke again before either of them could respond. “Your boyfriends’ man date is over,” Hannah informed them. “And they’re both looking for you, and since you,” Hannah said, looking at Quinn “hid in the bathroom at my old apartment at my last birthday party and you,” Hannah said, staring at Rachel, “hid in the bathroom at my dinner party last year, I thought this might be a good place to look for you guys.”

“Shut up,” Rachel and Quinn said together.

Hannah laughed. “No, seriously. Is this an Ohio thing? Because the only times anyone has hidden out in my bathtub has been with you guys.”

“I should find Rex,” Rachel mumbled, scrambling out of the tub. “Great party,” she told Hannah as she passed.

Hannah smacked Rachel on the butt. “You’ll have to participate more at the next one, I promise there will be fewer people.”

Rachel didn’t turn around, just flung her arm in the air and waved.

Hannah turned to Quinn in amusement. “See, I knew you knew Rachel.”

“Well, if you’d _told me her name_ , instead of just calling her ‘my friend from Julliard,’ we could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble.”

Hannah looked amused “When I told you that she was from Ohio, you didn’t stop to think that maybe it was Rachel?”

Quinn scowled and didn’t respond. The truth was-- she had, but she’d dismissed it. “How drunk is my boyfriend?” Quinn asked.

“On the Rachel Berry scale of intoxication, Ethan would be at an 18.”

Quinn scowled. “What’s an 18?”

“Well, the scale only goes to 20, and 20 is horizontal nystagmus, which is Rachel’s way of saying blotto.”

Quinn groaned.

“I know, he’s a doctor, you’d think you’d know better. But Rex is a 25 if that makes you feel any better.”

It didn’t. Quinn shook her head and gave Hannah a quick hug. “Great party,” she said, managing to keep _most_ of the sarcasm out of her voice.

Quinn searched for her boyfriend and found him standing near the front door, still talking to Rex and Rachel. She sighed and approached them.

“Babes!” he exclaimed, beaming at Quinn. “Rex has tickets to the Yankee game tomorrow and Rachel doesn’t want to go, so I’m going with him!”

Ethan looked about 14 years old at the moment, all excitement and hero worship. Quinn brushed some of his dark hair out of his eyes.

“That’s great.” She smiled at him and gave him her arm. “Need some help?”

Ethan chuckled and took her arm. “I’m okay.” Ethan reached out with his right hand, which Rex shook. “It was nice to meet you,” Ethan said.

Rex smiled. “It was good to meet you, too.”

The two couples left together, waving goodbye to the hostess. Ethan seemed okay and was walking without any assistance. He was a little wobbly, but okay. Rex, on the other hand, was half leaning on Rachel, which looked absolutely ridiculous because he was over a foot taller than she was and had at least eighty or ninety pounds on her.

“Hey,” Quinn called out to Rachel, seeing Rachel straining to keep Rex balanced as they walked. “Do you need some help?” She dropped her boyfriend’s arm. “Help her!” she said crossly, slapping Ethan’s stomach.

Ethan chuckled. “Yeah, okay.” He got on the other side of Rex and helped Rachel move Rex along in a straight line. He was a little wobbly himself and they only got as far as the front door of the building before they started to stumble.

“I think I got it now,” Rachel said. “Really. Thanks. I can make it to the car.”

Quinn glared at Ethan. “Wait by the door. I’ll help her with him.”

“It’s not that far,” Rachel protested.

“I’ll help.”

Quinn helped Rachel get Rex to the car. He was _heavy_ \-- muscled and solid. Rex’s car was, in fact, not that far away and they practically poured him into the passenger seat. Rachel strapped him in with the seatbelt. He smiled drunkenly and cupped Rachel’s face with one of his hands.

“I love you, baby,” he murmured, looking at her fondly.

Rachel chuckled. “I know you do,” she said shaking her head affectionately. She made sure the seatbelt was secure and then shut the door. “Thanks,” she said to Quinn, standing to her full height.

“Sure,” Quinn said. “I’m pretty sure he would have fallen on his face.”

“Probably,” Rachel acknowledged.

“He sure can drink.”

“And?” There was a tiny edge to Rachel’s voice. Yes, Rex drank a lot, probably more than he should. But he was not an alcoholic.

“It was just an observation.”

“Do you need help with Ethan?” Rachel asked. “How are you getting home?”

Quinn sighed. Shit, she hadn’t thought of that. “We’ll cab it.”

Rachel smiled. “Get in, I’ll take you guys home.”

“It’s okay--”

“Get in.”

Quinn shrugged and got into Rex’s car. They drove the 600 feet back to Hannah’s building and then Quinn got outside the car and helped Ethan into the car.

“Uh, Ethan’s place is closer,” Quinn said.

“Okay.”

Quinn directed Rachel to Ethan’s apartment. It only took about ten minutes to get there and Rachel pulled in front.

“Thanks,” Quinn said, opening the door and pulling Ethan out.

“Sure.”

“Goodnight, Rachel.”

“Goodnight, Quinn.” She smiled at Ethan. “Goodnight, Ethan. It was nice to meet you.”

“You, too,” Ethan said.

“Goodnight Ethan!” Rex called, rousing long enough to say goodbye to his new friend.

“Goodnight Rex!” Ethan called back.

Quinn bit back a sarcastic comment about the two of them falling in love and shut the door.

Rachel watched as Quinn and Ethan entered the building before she drove away.

Each of them were left wondering how the hell their boyfriends ended up getting Man Crushes on each other.


	2. Chapter 2

  
If Quinn Fabray had to hear Ethan crow about what a great guy Rex Donovan was one more time, she would scream. They went to _one_ game together, which was followed by a few nights of bar hopping followed by an impromptu trip to Atlantic City for a night of gambling and suddenly Rex was the best guy ever.

“He’s just a _great_ guy!” Ethan exclaimed. “I thought he’d be a dick, but he’s awesome.”

“If you think he’s so great, why don’t you marry him?” Quinn snapped.

Ethan was unfazed. “Maybe I will. He and I could go to Massachusetts and make a weekend of it. He seems more like he’d prefer a platinum band over a gold one, doesn’t he?”

Quinn couldn’t help but snort and laugh. “You’re an idiot,” she said fondly.

He laughed. “I know.” He kissed her cheek. “I need to shower,” he said. “Oh, by the way, we’re having dinner with Rex and Rachel tomorrow night.”

“Okay,” Quinn said, suppressing the urge to whine. She was just really busy and in all honesty, she didn’t want to endure some awkward double date with Rachel and her boyfriend. But considering how frequently Rex and Ethan hung out in the past few weeks-- Ethan had spent more of his free time with Rex than with her, she knew the double dates were inevitable.

\--

Quinn chuckled lightly as she watched Ethan and Rex shaking hands, looking extremely eager to see one another. It was hilarious to see how pleased they were to see each other.

Rachel smiled at Quinn, but didn’t make a move to shake hands or hug. “Hey Quinn.”

“Hey Rachel.”

“Hey Rach,” Ethan greeted. He moved toward Rachel.

“Hey Ethan,” Rachel said softly, stepping up on tip toe as he craned his head down so she could kiss his cheek.

“Hi Quinn,” Rex said, smiling at the blonde.

“Hi Rex,” Quinn greeted politely, accepting his cheek kiss.

They sat down and Quinn watched as Rex pulled the chair out for Rachel.

“Thanks,” Rachel said.

“Sure.”

Quinn expected Ethan to follow suit, which he did. He _never_ pulled her chair out for her anymore. They’d been dating for two years and he stopped doing that six months after they became exclusive. Ethan was the kind of guy who would have pulled her chair out just because Rex did. Ethan was nice, just sort of thoughtless and Quinn anticipated he would be pulling her chair out for her for another few weeks before he slipped into his usual pattern.

One of the first things Quinn noticed was that Rachel was _really_ quiet and that Rex ordered _for_ her and Rachel didn’t seem to care.

Once the food came, Rachel seemed content to just listen to Rex and Ethan talk. They were laughing about some bar fight they’d witnessed and Rachel smiled and focused her eyes on her plate as she played with her fork, but she didn’t touch her food.

Ethan’s phone went off and he checked it. “It’s the hospital, I need to take this. I’ll be right back, Babes,” he said, kissing Quinn’s cheek. “Sorry,” he apologized to Rachel and Rex as he stood up.

“Sure,” Rex said. He turned his attention to Rachel and curled a lock of Rachel’s hair around his finger. “You don’t like the food? You haven’t touched it.”

“I’m vegan, baby” Rachel said softly.

“That doesn’t have any meat in it,” Rex said, pointing to the vegetarian quiche he’d ordered for her. “It’s a vegetarian quiche and…” he trailed off. “Shit,” he said. “The eggs. Why didn’t you say something?”

Rachel shrugged.

“I guess I need to stop ordering for you,” he said with a chuckle. “Bad habits are hard to break though.”

Rachel shrugged again. “It’s okay,” she said with a smile.

“I’d share my steak with you, but you know…”

Rachel laughed again. “Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

Rachel shrugged. “You like quiche. We can box it up and you can eat it later.”

“But what are you going to eat?”

“It’s okay, Rex.”

“Want half my salad?” Quinn asked. “It’s huge and I won’t be able to finish it.”

Rachel smiled at her. “No, thanks,” she said. “I’m really not that hungry. I’ve had a stomach bug all day.”

“We should have rescheduled,” Rex said. “Right, Quinn?”

“Sure,” Quinn said.

Then Rex’s phone went off. He looked at it. “It’s my mother,” he said rolling his eyes.

“You be nice!” Rachel chided.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Rex said, saluting Rachel. “But she’s going to want to talk to you once I’m done.” He answered his phone with a “Hi Ma,” and excused himself.

Quinn and Rachel were left at the table in uncomfortable silence.

“So,” Quinn said. “Are you sure you don’t want half my salad?”

Rachel shook her head. “I really have had a stomach thing all day.”

“Why didn’t you just tell him anyway?” Quinn asked curiously. “I mean, when he was ordering for you? Why didn’t you remind him you don’t eat eggs?”

Rachel chuckled. “It makes him feel manly or something. Most of the time he gets it right. It’s a very small concession and like I said, I’ve had a stomach bug all day, so I didn’t bother.”

“You aren’t pregnant are you?” Quinn asked bluntly.

Rachel made a face. “Heaven forefend,” she said, looking like the Rachel Berry that Quinn knew in high school and not this excessively polite and poised replacement who didn’t even speak up to tell her boyfriend not to order her the quiche because she didn’t eat eggs. It was kind of a relief to see the old Rachel.

Quinn chuckled. “Right?” she asked, shaking her head. She was not in any hurry to get pregnant either.

She was twenty three and five months away from turning twenty four and Rachel was twenty two and a month away from turning twenty three and despite the fact Quinn had already given birth and put a baby up for adoption, she was _not_ ready to have another baby and start a family. It just made her even more certain that giving Beth up was the right choice for her because while it wasn’t _impossible_ , it was certainly less likely she’d be in a dual MBA and JD program at Columbia now if she kept the baby.

She wasn’t even ready for a baby _now_ , but she was kind of glad that Rachel seemed equally unready and unwilling to have a baby because Rachel seemed to have it together.

Rachel chuckled. “Our boyfriends are in love with each other.”

“I know,” Quinn said. “I told Ethan that if he liked Rex so much, he should just marry him and Ethan said they could go to Massachusetts and make a weekend of it.”

Rachel laughed and took a sip of the sparkling mineral water she ordered in hopes it would quell her queasy stomach. “I told Rex to marry Ethan, and he said he would be honored and flattered if Ethan would have him.”

Quinn threw back her head and laughed, finding it genuinely hilarious.

“I know,” Rachel murmured.

Quinn sighed. “We’re not going to get rid of each other,” she said. “Our boyfriends like each other too much.”

“I know,” Rachel said. “I realize we weren’t friends in high school…”

“Very true,” Quinn acknowledged. “Although I think the first two years was more due to me and the last two years was more due to you.”

Rachel snorted. “I beg to differ, but point is, since it appears that our boyfriends have become infatuated with one another, we should at least be civil to one another even if we do have somewhat of a history of semi-animosity.”

“I agree,” Quinn said. “We’ll start over or whatever.” She held her hand out. “Quinn Fabray, professional student,” she said self-deprecatingly.

Rachel reached across the table, took Quinn’s hand and shook. “Rachel Berry, aspiring actress,” she said, mimicking Quinn’s tone.

Quinn chuckled. “I think you’re more than aspiring. I think you’ve arrived.”

Rachel laughed. “Not particularly, but thank you for saying so,” she said sincerely.

Rex came back to the table and put his hand on Rachel’s shoulder. “Your turn.”

Rachel smiled at him and took the phone. “Thanks.”

“The paparazzi are outside,” Rex said. “So you’re going to want to keep it short.”

“Okay.”

The paparazzi didn’t bother her much-- she just smiled and tried to be as polite as possible. She’d trained for that her entire life and in high school, she’d had her own personal stalker with a camera, Jacob Ben Israel, the little creep, so she was used to it. And if they got to be too aggressive and they got too close to her and she got an elbow or a camera lens hit her in the face, it wasn’t such a big deal to her.

There’d been an incident last year when she and Rex got swarmed and she was so much smaller than everyone else and they were just _crowding_ her, that she got her shoulder dislocated, but even that didn’t seem that bad.

“Do you want me to come with you?”

Rachel shook her head. “I’ll be fine, baby.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t go outside, just talk to her by the door.”

“That would be very rude to people waiting to get seated and anyway, I’m keeping your mom waiting, baby,” Rachel said gently. She put the phone to her ear and walked away, talking quietly.

Quinn looked at Rex appraisingly, not sure to think he was controlling, over-protective or neither. She hoped Rachel or Ethan would come back to the table soon, considering Rex was _their_ boyfriend and not hers.

“So Ethan says you’re at Columbia.”

“Yes,” Quinn said.

It was just getting to be awkward when Ethan made his mercifully welcome return to the table.

Rachel came back a few minutes later holding Rex’s phone in one hand and pinching her nose with the other. She passed Rex his phone and he pocketed it.

“What the hell?” Rex demanded, rising to his feet and moving toward the door.

“Someone just got a little too close,” Rachel said, clinging to his arm. “It’s not a big deal, it wasn’t even really his fault. I’ll explain it later, just let me get cleaned up.”

“I’ll go with you,” Ethan said. “I’ll make sure nothing’s broken.”

“Thanks E,” Rex said distractedly. He turned his attention to the brunette. “Rachel, what the _hell_ happened?”

“Just let me get cleaned up and I’ll explain. Don’t go out there!”

“But--“

“Just let me get cleaned up, please?”

Rex clenched his jaw. “Okay.”

“You won’t go out there?”

“No.”

Rex watched as Rachel and Ethan walked toward the restrooms and then stalked toward the front of the restaurant. Quinn scrambled after him.

“Hey, wait,” Quinn said. “You promised you wouldn’t go out there.”

Rex’s jaw was clenched. “Last year they dislocated her shoulder, and today they bust her nose? What do I have to wait for? For them to Princess Diana my girlfriend?”

Quinn hesitantly put her hand on his back. “She said it wasn’t the guy’s fault.”

“Rachel _always_ thinks that every time someone does something shitty to her it’s _her_ fault,” Rex snapped. “And it never is. How the hell did someone get close enough to do that?”

“Okay,” Quinn said. “But if it was an accident and someone gets hurt, Rachel will be even more upset.”

Rex exhaled slowly and seemed to calm down. “Okay,” he muttered, and allowed himself to be pulled back toward the table.

Rachel and Ethan caught up to them before they reached the table. Rachel looked alarmed. “Did you confront them?” she asked anxiously.

“I was going to,” Rex grumbled. “But Quinn pulled my head out of my ass.”

Rachel sighed with relief. “Thank you,” she told Quinn, giving her a genuine smile.

“Are you okay?” Quinn asked.

“It’s just a bloody nose,” Rachel said. She slapped Rex’s arm. “You silly old man, what were you going to do?”

His smile was faint. “Are you really okay?”  
  
“I’m fine,” she said. She had some toilet paper plugging her nose and she knew she looked foolish, but she wanted to get out of the bathroom as soon as possible to make sure Rex didn’t go outside to confront the photographers. Ethan was very sweet to look at her nose, but given the lack of pain, Rachel knew it hadn’t been broken.

“What happened?”

“Someone got too close and _he_ got pushed and he and his equipment got knocked into me. It was an accident. It wasn’t really his fault, honey.”

He scowled. “It sounds like it was his fault. He was too close to you to begin with.”

Quinn agreed with him and she sort of wished she’d let him go out there to confront them.

“Just drop it, okay?” Rachel asked softly. “Please?” she begged. She didn’t want to come off looking like a diva who sicced her more-famous boyfriend every time someone crossed her. She just wanted to do what she loved-- act and sing. And yeah, she absolutely loved the fame, but the idea of incurring bad press was anxiety-provoking for her-- she _wanted_ to be liked because she spent most of her life either barely tolerated or outright loathed. She didn’t think it was such a big deal and now that she was _finally_ losing her starfucker reputation and gaining some well-deserved respect for her talent, she wasn’t going to jeopardize it over a bloody nose.

Ethan smiled. “She’s a tough one,” he remarked. “She’ll be fine.”

Rex chuckled. “Thanks, E.”

Rachel beamed at Ethan, but didn’t say anything.

“Sure,” Ethan said.

“Hey,” Rex said. “What are you guys doing for Thanksgiving?”

“I work the next day,” Ethan said. “So I’m not going home. My family’s disappointed, but I’ll see them during Christmas and Quinn’s mom always comes here for Thanksgiving. Why, what are you doing?”

Quinn’s mother always visited her, while Quinn’s older sister, her brother-in-law and her nieces had to get her father for Thanksgiving. Quinn thought it was more than fair. She had no interest in a relationship with her father.

“Well, I’m sending my parents on vacation for three weeks,” Rex explained.

“You are?” Rachel asked. “Why?”

“Their anniversary, Rachel,” Rex said. “It was last month.”

Rachel gasped. “I forgot!”

Rex was amused. “I signed your name to the card.”

“How did you remember?” Rachel asked. “I’m always the one who remembers.”

Rex chuckled. “You plugged it into my phone.”

Rachel groaned. “And it was their fiftieth wedding anniversary!”

She adored his parents even though they joked that she was more appropriate for a granddaughter than a future daughter-in-law.

Rex chuckled. “I know.” He looked at Ethan and Quinn. “So we’re staying in the city. Do you guys want to come over?” he asked. “Rachel and I like to cook and Quinn, of course your mother is welcome.”

Quinn looked quizzically at Rachel. “You’re not seeing your dads?”

Rachel’s eyes were steely. “I lost my dads, remember?”

Quinn blinked. “You misplaced them?”

She knew it was a dumb thing to say, but it just seemed so incongruous to her-- that matter-of-fact tone that Rachel had, like she was reporting the weather when she was relating something so awful.

Rachel looked exasperated. “They died, Quinn.”

Quinn blanched. “What? When?”

“Senior year.”

“College?”

Rachel was impatient. “High school.”

Ethan and Rex looked distinctly uncomfortable.

“I don’t remember that!”

“Well,” Rachel said evenly. “You didn’t ask. It was at the end of May, a few weeks before Regionals. I missed about a week of school because of it.”

“You never said anything,” Quinn said softly. She was _sure_ she would have remembered because, duh, how could she not remember something like that.

Rachel bit the inside of her cheek to keep her rage from bubbling out. She wanted to snap that it was none of Quinn’s business, not then and not now and that it wasn’t like Quinn would have given a _shit_ back then anyway and how she never told anyone what happened to her fathers because she didn’t think anyone would _care_. Not about her fathers who were _always_ just the two homos who lived in that white house in Easton Road and certainly not about her. No one asked her about why she was gone for a week and she truly didn’t think anyone would care.

When her fathers died, she was a few weeks away from graduation and just a summer away from Julliard-- she wasn’t going to let _anything_ stop her. She was trying not to be the annoying diva she was in high school, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t ruthless-- because she was.

She was just as ruthless now as she was in high school, she just did a better job at hiding it _and_ a lot of her priorities had changed so that the things that were important to her as a teenager definitely were not important to her now. But she was still ruthless and disciplined and back then, she was determined to achieve her dreams and not even the death of her fathers was going to stop her. She got herself emancipated-- she’d been seventeen at the time and seven months away from her eighteenth birthday and legal adulthood. She wasn’t about to have her life ruined just because she had a later birthday than the rest of her graduating class. She spent most of the summer taking care of her fathers’ affairs and then packed her childhood house up, sold it and left Lima for New York City, intending _never_ to return.

Rachel forced herself to put on a docile smile as the extremely unpleasant memories of her last months in Lima hit her because she was sharing a meal with Quinn Fabray. Just like she wasn’t above subterfuge and sabotage to get a role she _really_ wanted, she wasn’t above being an actress in her personal life. She and Rex had promised one another that they would never _act_ with one another, that acting was what they did in their professional and public lives, not in their private lives, but Rachel wasn’t above it, if it made her life a little easier.

“Well,” Rachel said with a bright smile that she didn’t feel _at all_ , but was meant to diminish the tension at the table. She was doing it to make herself feel more comfortable and to put Rex and Ethan more at ease. God, _this_ was why she did _not_ communicate with anyone from high school. “It was a very difficult time for me,” she said. “I was unprepared to deal with it and talking about it made it worse. So I kept it to myself.”

Quinn blinked hard. “But…” she trailed off. She wanted to say how _hard_ it must have been, and she thought back to that time and she thought it was just amazing how no one ever would have known from looking at Rachel. But it did make sense when Quinn looked back on it, because the other glee kids stayed in touch throughout the summer after graduation-- the original twelve members of New Directions graduated together, but Rachel completely disappeared. “I’m sorry, Rachel.”

“It’s all right,” Rachel said placidly with a calm smile. “It was years ago. So why don’t you guys join us for Thanksgiving?” She didn’t really want them to, but she knew Rex did.

Quinn turned to look uncertainly at Ethan, but he was already agreeing.

“I’m down!” Ethan said eagerly. “I wasn’t looking forward to Thanksgiving in a crowded restaurant, to be honest,” he said. “And it feels pointless to cook when it’s just three people.” He glanced at Quinn. “Babes?”

Quinn forced a smile. “Sure.”

Rachel was smiling and she looked poised and gracious, but Quinn was certain that Rachel was displeased.  
\--

Once she returned home from that uncomfortable dinner, she’d Googled Rachel because she realized she didn’t know Rachel’s fathers’ names. She found a bunch of vacuous articles, mostly fluff pieces and so she gave up. She’d called Santana and didn’t even bother with a greeting, she just asked Santana “did you know Rachel Berry’s dads both died while we were in high school?” which her friend answered with a blunt ‘no’ after a long pause.

Quinn called around and asked Puck, Finn, Artie and Kurt before she realized that it was highly possible it was something Rachel might want to keep under wraps, and immediately felt bad about broadcasting it when Rachel never told anyone.

It was just that she was dying of curiosity.

She finally found out from Ethan who’d asked Rex without her prompting.

“Because you were dying to know anyway,” Ethan told her, rolling his eyes.

It was a car accident-- one of her fathers was driving and apparently had a heart attack, which was the thing that actually killed him and her other father was killed in the ensuing crash.

Quinn was horrified. “Oh my God!”

“I know, right? Ethan said.

“So dramatic!”

“I know, right?” Ethan chuckled a little.

Quinn slapped his arm. “It’s not funny.”

“I know!”

“Oh my God!” It was just so dramatic. Quinn shook her head. ‘

“I know.”

Quinn shook her head. “I seriously had no idea. I don’t even remember her being that different after they died.”

“Well, either she’s a really great actress, or she’s a cold-hearted bitch.”

“She’s not cold-hearted,” Quinn said. “I mean, I never really knew her. But that’s not her.”

“I know,” Ethan said. “I don’t really think so either. I was just going through the various options with you.” He gave her a small smile. “ _You_ were the bitch in high school, right? Because she doesn’t seem like the type.”

Quinn chuckled. “I was,” she acknowledged. “You know this.”

She didn’t think her personality changed that much since high school, but she could acknowledge the fact that a lot of the things that mattered to her in high school didn’t matter to her now and she really couldn’t remember why she’d been so obsessed with some of those things.

One of the reasons she didn’t like large get-togethers was the fact that she just didn’t want to be bothered with making nice with a bunch of people-- she’d come to realize that most people were _assholes_ and she really didn’t care to get to know them. She had her mother, her sister, her brother-in-law, her nieces, a few close friends, a nice boyfriend, a couple of kind classmates and a slightly larger social circle of nice acquaintances. She didn’t see or feel the need to expand. She could readily concede that she was still a _bitch_ , but Quinn thought it was just a personality defect and not because she was trying to be popular, because she didn’t care about popularity anymore.

On Thanksgiving, Quinn strenuously reminded her mother _not_ to bring up Rachel’s fathers. Her mother remembered Rachel very vividly as being “the little one with the voice and the gay fathers” and Quinn was mortified by the idea her mother would off-handedly ask Rachel about her fathers and bring up the whole uncomfortable issue again. Her mother repeatedly said she’d remember, but Quinn reminded her mother two more times on the cab ride to Rex and Rachel’s apartment.

\--

Rachel answered the door, looking warm and vivacious, but Quinn had known her in high school and Quinn suddenly realized why Rachel seemed different, even if she didn’t behave so differently. It wasn’t just that Rachel was quieter and seemed more thoughtful-- those were just hallmarks of maturation-- it was that Rachel’s eyes weren’t soft or warm the way they used to be, at least not the way Quinn remembered them when they were younger. Rachel’s eyes weren’t _cold_ , not exactly anyway, though Quinn sort of understood why Rachel had a reputation for being a little frosty, they’d just hardened.

“Hi Mrs. Fabray,” Rachel greeted politely. She smiled up at Ethan. “Hi Ethan.” She smiled at Quinn. “Hi Quinn.” She gestured for them to come inside.

\--

Dinner was not as awkward as Quinn thought it would be, and she had to admit, the food was _amazing_.

“It’s mostly Rex,” Rachel explained. “He’s an amazing cook.”

Rex chuckled and put his arm around her shoulders. “Well, you’d probably be in a better position to say that if you’d _eat_ more of what I cook.”

Rachel shrugged. “I’m vegan.”

Rex laughed. “When Rachel and I were first met, she tried to convert me to her…alternative lifestyle.”

Rachel laughed, open-mouthed and swatted at his chest. “You.”

“Anyway, I refuse because I have no moral objections to the killing of animals for food--”

Rachel pouted. “Why do you have to emphasize that?”

“Because I like meat, honey. So Rachel tried to convert me to her alternative lifestyle and one night she said she had a present for me.”

Rex laughed as Rachel immediately realized what story he was going to tell and began to groan and blush. She hid her face in her hands.

“Rex…”

“It was a book,” Rex said. “And at the time Rachel was only seventeen, we’d only known each other for a couple months, and we were just friends, so I thought maybe she went to the bookstore and bought me a book she thought I’d like. But when I unwrapped it, it was a vegan cookbook called ‘Foods that Don’t Bite Back’.” Rex threw his head back and laughed.

The others at the table laughed as well and Rachel blushed a deep red.

“He said he wanted to cook for me!” Rachel protested, covering one side of her face with her hand.

“I thought it was pretty ballsy,” Rex said with a laugh. He beamed at Rachel. “I was madly in love. It was a good thing you turned eighteen a couple months later.”

Rachel smiled back. “You were a good sport, nothing like your reputation at all,” she half-joked, because while he had a reputation for being a nice guy, he also had a reputation for being kind of a womanizer.

Rex chuckled. “You’re not exactly your reputation either, Rach.”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “Thank God for that.”

Quinn watched them together and she had to admit that as hardened as Rachel seemed to her when they were one-on-one, when Rachel was in her own element, she was a lot like the Rachel she knew in high school-- warm and sweet.

“Well,” Quinn said. “Everyone says you’re polite, reliable and easy to work with, so maybe being your reputation isn’t all bad.”

Rex smiled and looked approvingly at her, and for a moment, Quinn could totally see the attraction. He was _really_ handsome with his dark hair, blue eyes and very symmetrical features, but Quinn just couldn’t get over the age difference. But it was also obvious how much Rex actually adored Rachel.

Rachel smiled self-deprecatingly. “Unlike in high school, huh?”

Quinn smiled back. “I think we should both be grateful we’re not the same people from high school.”

Rachel gave her a tiny grin. “You weren’t so bad,” she said softly.

And she had to admit to herself that it was true. Quinn had been awful to her for the first couple years, but she’d mellowed out once they were in glee together and after Quinn got pregnant. The insults and the Slushies diminished through their sophomore and junior years before they disappeared completely during their senior year

“I was a bitch,” Quinn acknowledged with a chuckle, rolling her eyes when her mother chided her for using such language at the table. “Sorry, Mom.”

“You weren’t, not really,” Rachel said softly, smiling.

The rest of the dinner went well and the conversation flowed a little more smoothly and Quinn could acknowledge that she was actually glad she was spending Thanksgiving at Rex Donovan and Rachel Berry’s apartment rather than in some restaurant.

Rachel baked the dessert since she apparently _loved_ to bake even if she refused to eat any of it because it used eggs.

“I could make vegan recipes,” Rachel said, “but Rex doesn’t like them,” she chuckled with a trace of fond annoyance.

The pumpkin cheesecake was excellent, and they sat around eating it (with Rachel nibbling on a vegan espresso chocolate chip cookie) and drinking Mexican coffees. After a while, Quinn’s mother excused herself amidst protests and Rex drove her back to the hotel she was staying at.

Quinn was left chatting with Ethan and Rachel while Rex drove her mother. Rachel seemed less comfortable, but Quinn thought that things were definitely less awkward than her previous interactions with Rachel. Still, both Quinn and Rachel were relieved when Rex came home.

Something about just having him around made Rachel feel a little more at ease. Rex had a reputation for being an affable, gregarious person-- and he was. But just like she tended to believe that people were only pretending to like her for their own ulterior motives, Rex tended to be suspicious of other people, too. The only difference was that he was much better at hiding it. He rarely took to new people-- most of his closest friends had been in his life for _years_ , but Rex had proclaimed Ethan as being “good people” and Quinn as “a good egg,” so Rachel was certain Ethan and Quinn would be in her life for a long time.

Rachel was comfortable with Ethan-- he was sweet and _really_ funny, and he liked to talk, so she just responded to whatever he had to say. She was less comfortable with Quinn, but she didn’t find Quinn as intimidating as she used to, and since she was kind of stuck with Quinn, she hoped they could one day be friends, or at least spend time with each other without feeling the need for a buffer.

The boys went onto the balcony to drink scotch and smoke cigars, leaving Rachel and Quinn in the living room watching some documentary Rex TiVoed on the Discovery Channel and drinking dirty martinis.

“Our boyfriends are such boys,” Quinn commented.

Rachel chuckled from low in her throat, because they really were. “You know,” she said, glancing over her shoulder in the direction of the raucous laughter from the balcony. “They kind of look alike.”

“They do!” Quinn exclaimed, really realizing it for the first time.

It was true. They were both tall, though Rex was taller by at least four inches, both had dark hair, blue eyes, prominent noses and strong jaw lines. Rex was a little bulkier, too, but Ethan looked like he could be Rex’s younger brother.

Quinn chuckled. “Well, we kind of always did have the same taste in men.”

Rachel was wry. “This is true. But at least it was obvious why we liked the boys we liked. It wasn’t like we had some mystifying attraction. Hannah likes guys who are kind of ugly.”

Quinn nodded. “She does,” she agreed. Hannah had a crush on a fellow classmate who was just _gross_. It wasn’t so much that he was unattractive, although no one would call him handsome, he was more interesting-bordering-on-unfortunate looking, it was that he was an asshole, too.

“She does concede the point.”

“Yeah.”

Rachel gave Quinn a tiny smile. “Did you really hide out in the bathroom at one of her parties?”

“Her parties are really overwhelming. I got over stimulated. I think she even had a fog machine or something. There were so many people, everyone was just on top of one another.”

Rachel winced at the mere thought of it and put her hand up. “Preaching to the choir, Quinn.”

Quinn chuckled. “I guess I am,” she drawled. She paused. “You didn’t seem to have that problem in high school,” she noted

Rachel shrugged. “I kind of had the same problem as you at Hannah’s parties. It was over-stimulating-- that’s exactly what it was. Everything was really loud and bright, there were so many people, I couldn’t _breathe_ and everyone was trying to talk to me and people were just pulling me from one place to the other…” Rachel sucked in a deep breath.

It’d been embarrassing, but she’d been ready to cry. It was ridiculous, she knew it, but she thought back to that party and one group of people would pull her aside and then someone else would pull her into their corner and then someone else would grab her and drag her along and it was just _too_ much. Hiding in the bathroom seemed like the only resort and since so many of Hannah’s parties turned out the same way, Rachel just felt the urge to hide out during Hannah’s housewarming before it got too bad.

Quinn was sympathetic. “And so many of the people she knows are such assholes.”

Rachel gaped at Quinn for a moment before she burst into delighted laughter. “That is _so_ true.”

Quinn laughed as well. “It’s because she talks to _everyone_.”

Rachel chuckled. “Yeah, and everyone becomes her new best friend ten minutes after she meets them.”

“Exactly. It’s a good thing we’re more discerning.”

“Exactly.”

Quinn put her hand up and Rachel slapped her hand against it in a high-five. They exchanged smiles.

“This isn’t so bad,” Quinn noted.

“It’s not,” Rachel said. “It’s much less horrifying than I thought it would be,” she blurted, and she _immediately_ regretted it because oh _God_ , that was precisely the sort of tactless thing she used to let slip out in high school that she was trying to stop herself from uttering now.

Quinn stared at her for a moment and then laughed. “There you are.”

Rachel raised an eyebrow. “Pardon?”

“That’s the Rachel I remember.”

It was kind of a relief to get a little glimpse of the old Rachel. Rachel just seemed so gracious and poised and though Quinn knew she had her life on track, she did feel a little lacking in comparison to Rachel who was doing _exactly_ what she said she’d do. It made Quinn feel like maybe she wasn’t such a mess after all.

Rachel blushed. “Sorry,” she said, genuinely meaning it.

“I didn’t say it was a bad thing. And anyway, I thought it was going to be horrifying, too.”

Rachel chuckled. “I’m actually _really_ surprised it wasn’t.”

Quinn laughed. “Right?”

They’d started out on opposite ends of the couch-- their backs pressed against the arms of the large couch, but they’d unconsciously moved closer together as they talked more and they only realized how close they were sitting to one another when their boyfriends emerged from the balcony smelling of scotch, cigars and cold November night. Ethan and Rex slipped in between Rachel and Quinn and the women had to edge toward the edges of the couch, ending up where they’d started out.


	3. Chapter 3

 

Ethan and Rex were still well-invested in their bromance, but Rachel and Quinn had little reason to see one another. Rachel saw more of Ethan than she did of Quinn and Quinn saw more of Rex than she did of Rachel, but the four did manage to get together a few more times that year.

Rachel had plans to meet Hannah for dinner and was surprised to see Quinn waiting outside the restaurant.

“Hey,” Rachel said, her voice becoming higher-pitched because she was really surprised.

“Hey!” Quinn exclaimed.

They each hesitantly moved toward one another and exchanged a quick, awkward hug.

“Are you meeting Hannah?”

“Yeah,” Quinn said. “She didn’t mention you were coming.”

“She didn’t tell me you were coming either.”

“I forgot,” Hannah said, coming up to them. “So sue me.”

\--

“So,” Rachel said, as they waited for their food to arrive. “It’s just the three of us? Don’t you typically travel in a pack?” she teased Hannah.

Hannah smiled. “I’m making my holiday rounds, but I thought I’d just pair you two together since you guys are my Ohio friends who hide in bathtubs.”

Quinn scowled. “I don’t want to be described as your friend who hides in bathtubs and I’m pretty sure Rachel doesn’t either.”

“I really don’t,” Rachel chimed in.

Hannah grinned. “Well,” she said. “You both hid in my bathtub and those were the only times in my life that happened to me. I think those are fair assessments of you two. And you’ve both done it more than once.”

Rachel and Quinn exchanged a look and each rolled her eyes.

\--

Halfway through the meal, Hannah gasped. “Shit!”

Rachel and Quinn looked at her. “What?”

“I totally forgot I was supposed to go over to my mom’s house tonight.” Hannah stood up. “I really have to go.”

“Uh…” Rachel said. “What?”

Quinn looked at Hannah suspiciously. “Are you for real? _You_ suggested we go out.”

“Yes! Seriously.” Hannah fished some cash out of her wallet and set it on the table. “I have to go. I’ll call you both later.” She smiled at them, waved and scampered away.

Quinn and Rachel stared at one another.

“Do you think she was telling the truth?” Quinn questioned.

“I don’t know,” Rachel admitted. “It’s so hard to tell with her. I don’t see a rationale for lying though, so I guess she’s telling the truth.”

Quinn smiled crookedly. “We can do this, right? We don’t need a buffer.”

Rachel gave her a half-smile. “Well, I know there isn’t a third party around, but I don’t think we’re going to be wrestling each other to the ground or anything.”

Quinn raised an eyebrow. “If we did, I bet it’ll end up on YouTube.”

Rachel laughed. “Probably.” She smiled suggestively and leaned across the table toward Quinn, one hand cupping her own cheek.

Quinn blinked at the sultry expression.

“Want to fake an argument?” Rachel teased. “We could find someone to tape it and sell it. It’ll be easy money.” She sat up and leaned back in her chair, and she smiled at Quinn, her expression now completely innocent.

Quinn snorted. “Don’t tempt me. I am racking up a _lot_ of student loan debt.”

Rachel smiled sympathetically. “I’m still paying off Julliard, too.”

“Well, it’s not like you graduated that long ago.” Quinn sighed. “I just keep getting more into debt.”

Rachel looked at her curiously. “What made you decide on the MBA/JD program?”

“Honestly?” Quinn asked. “Because I had no idea what I wanted to do during my senior year in college.”

“Well, what did you major in?”

“Econ.”

“You didn’t want to go into that?”

Quinn made a face. “Not really,” she said. “It just seemed like something safe to major in and a field where I could get a job after graduating, unlike, you know, English or History or something. But I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I decided on the dual MBA and JD program because I thought I could do _something_ with one or the other.”

Rachel looked at her intently. “But you don’t want to do either?”

“It’s not that,” Quinn said. “I actually really like going to school. I’m learning a lot and I actually understand it. I just wanted to buy some time from going into the real world and being a student affords you with a certain kind of immunity.”

Rachel smiled. “Yes,” she acknowledged. “Especially law school or an MBA program and you’re in both. It does give a lot of credibility, unlike if you were, I don’t know, pursuing a Masters in pottery or something. No one asks you ‘why’ when you’re in law school or getting your MBA.”

“Right.” Quinn chuckled. “Do they even have Masters degrees in pottery?”

Rachel smiled. “I don’t know, they seem to have a Masters degree for everything though.”

Quinn laughed. “They really do.”

Rachel peered at Quinn. “So you really don’t know what you’d want to do?”

Quinn shrugged. “I have a little idea, but…” she shrugged again. “I was thinking maybe with the Labor and Human Resources Legal Team with the Department of Corrections-- it’s the house counsel for personnel issues, because as boring as it sounds, you _know_ there would be entertaining drama.”

Rachel giggled. “Yes.”

“But I have some time to think about it,” Quinn said. “I think about it a lot, and I don’t have any interest in working as a public defender, or for the District Attorney. _Of course_ I think about stuff like going into human rights or environmental law, but to be _really_ honest, it’s not really my passion.”

Rachel chuckled. “I get it. I mean, those are tough fields to go into.”

“It’s not like I’m anti human rights or anti-environment.”

“I was not assuming that you were, Quinn.”

“I have kind of fantasized about arguing a case before the Supreme Court and winning or even being a Supreme Court justice myself,” Quinn admitted.

Rachel grinned. “Really? That would be awesome,” she said sincerely.

“But I think I’d be scared,” Quinn confessed. “And honestly, I don’t know if I’m ambitious enough to make it happen, especially the second one. I mean, I guess I just want to be able to make a living and not hurt anyone, you know?”

“Yes,” Rachel said. “And it doesn’t sound like too much to ask. You could always work for a federal judge or something, too.”

“Yeah, I thought about it.” Quinn shrugged. “I don’t know, ask me in a couple years when I really have to worry about it.”

Rachel laughed. “I will. And I will bring up this precise conversation.”

Quinn grinned. “I’m comfortable with that.”

“You know, it seems like you’re leaning more toward the government, rather than like, corporate, you didn’t bring that up at all.”

Quinn smiled. “I’ll probably end up in corporate,” she said. “But I still like to pretend like I’m in law school to change the world. But not even I believe myself. Working for the government seems like enough security with less guilt.”

Rachel chuckled. “You have very interesting preoccupations.”

Quinn guffawed. “Do I?

“Well,” Rachel said. “Interesting to me.”

“I’m glad I can entertain you,” Quinn joked. She paused. “Also, I really like money,” she said, only half-joking. “So I wouldn’t mind working with it.”

Rachel smiled at her. “I can picture you as a ruthless CEO,” she joked.

Quinn sighed. “I know,” she said. “Me too.”

Rachel paused, gazing at Quinn unsure if the blonde was joking or not. But then Quinn smiled and laughed and so Rachel did, too.

\--

“So,” Rachel said as they exited the restaurant together. “What are your Christmas plans?”

“My mom and I are going to my sister’s,” Quinn said. “My sister always has my dad over for Thanksgiving, so Christmas is when my mom gets to see my sister, my brother-in-law and my nieces.”

Rachel nodded. “Oh,” she said. “Are you seeing your father?”

Quinn snorted. “No,” she said, making a face. “I’m trying to have less assholes in my life.”

“Oh.”

Quinn blanched. “Crap,” she said softly. “Rachel, I’m sorry.”

Rachel was baffled. “Why? Because you said ‘asshole’? Surely you noticed I would not find that offensive.”

“No…it’s just..I mean, I’m complaining about my dad and…you know…your fathers…” Quinn trailed off.

Rachel paused. “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t even think of it that way.”

And she really hadn’t. She wasn’t that close to her fathers when they died. She’d loved them, of course, and losing them had been pretty terrible, but it wasn’t emotionally devastating or decimating. It’d _broken_ her heart, but it didn’t break _her_. It was by far the worst thing that happened to her, and it was bar-none the hardest time in her life. She’d loved her fathers, but she missed just having parents more than she missed them _as_ parents. They’d long drifted apart and she’d honestly felt like an inconvenience, like some pet that had long lost its appeal to its owners and overstayed its welcome just by being alive. She missed them from time to time, sometimes desperately, but she really didn’t think of them that often, even around the holidays because they’d left her alone on the holidays for years. She was okay without her fathers.

The only reason she felt so angry when Quinn brought them up during that first dinner was because Rachel didn’t think it was any of the blonde’s business. But this felt much different.

“I’m really sorry,” Quinn muttered, contrite.

“It’s okay,” Rachel said. “I honestly didn’t think of it that way. It genuinely never even occurred to me to think of it t hat way, Quinn.”

Quinn hesitated before she spoke. Rachel seemed angry when she’d first disclosed what happened to her fathers, but she seemed more receptive to questions now. Quinn thought she’d try asking about it again. “Why didn’t you say anything when it first happened?” she asked softly.

Rachel’s posture straightened and she crossed her arms over her chest. She looked defensive and opened her mouth to speak, but then stopped. She didn’t want to snap at Quinn, particularly because she was sure that if she did, Quinn would tell Ethan, Ethan would tell Rex and Rex would scold her, and she didn’t want a scolding from her boyfriend about being rude to her former high school bully. And anyway, it’d been a perfectly nice evening, so she didn’t want to ruin it.

“It’s like I told you,” Rachel murmured. “It was a difficult time for me.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said softly.

Rachel smiled. “Anyway. I should get home.”

“Uh,” Quinn said. “That place across the street has some great desserts and it has a vegan selection. Do you want to run across and maybe get something?”

Rachel paused. She was uncertain. “Uh…okay. Sure.”

Quinn smiled and Rachel smiled back.

\--

They ran across the street, giggling as people honked and the paparazzi snapped pictures of Rachel and Quinn illegally jaywalking.

They shuffled into the restaurant and quickly got a booth. They ordered a couple of coffees and a slice of vegan chocolate cake which Rachel passionately swore to Quinn would taste like regular chocolate cake though Quinn remained skeptical.

Quinn chuckled. “Now you’re going to get scolded by the parents of America for teaching their children that it’s okay to jaywalk.”

“It _is_ okay to jaywalk as long as you don’t get hit by a car,” Rachel said with a smile.

Quinn laughed. “I bet Rex gives you grief for doing that.”

Rachel snorted. “Rex gives me grief for everything. He really enjoys correcting my behavior.”  
  
Quinn wasn’t sure if Rachel was joking or not, but she laughed anyway. “How much of your behavior needs correcting?”

Rachel laughed. “Apparently a lot.”

They laughed together and lapsed into a brief silence that was only moderately uncomfortable until Quinn spoke again.

“Hey,” Quinn said. “So, about _your_ Christmas plans, you never said what they were.”

“I’m Jewish, Quinn.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah, I forgot.”

“Anyway,” Rachel said with a shrug. “Rex is going to visit his parents because he’s not Jewish. So I’ll just hang out here.”

“You’re not going with him?” Quinn asked. “So you’re just going to be here? By yourself?”

“Well, I’m Jewish. Christmas doesn’t have the same meaning to me as it does to you and--”

“Do you want to just come over to my sister’s with me and my mom? You invited us on Thanksgiving,” Quinn blurted, interrupting Rachel. “I mean, won’t it be lonely being here by yourself on Christmas?”

Rachel smiled crookedly. “That’s really sweet of you to offer,” she said sincerely. “But I have a matinee show the day after Christmas, so I can’t get away. I actually typically go home with Rex for Christmas and celebrate with his family.”

Quinn chuckled. “I can’t believe Rex is from Seattle. He and Ethan were like little girls when they found out they were both from Burien.”

Rachel laughed. “I know. I think they thought it meant they were soulmates. Although Rex’s parents live in Seattle proper now.”

“They’ll probably fly out together.”

“I know, right?”

Quinn smiled. “So you really won’t be lonely?”

Rachel shrugged. “I don’t mind being alone. It’s not the same thing as lonely, you know? And anyway, it’ll be nice to have the house to myself for a while. I have a lot of stuff I want to get done around it that I can’t when Rex is home, because he’s like, ‘whatcha doing? Pay attention to me! Hey hey! What’s going on?’” Rachel laughed fondly. “He’s like a little kid with ADHD.” She paused. “Or a puppy. A really annoying puppy that will defecate on the carpet because you don’t pay attention to it and you really want to scold it and yell at it but then it does something cute and now it’s too stupid and cute to yell at.”

“Please tell me Rex has never pooped on the carpet.”

Rachel made a face. “Gross, Quinn.”

“You made the analogy.”

“I did not intend for you to fixate on the poop part, Quinn. I only meant Rex is high-energy and requires a great deal of attention which diminishes my ability to do household chores and make improvements to the home.”

Quinn laughed because she could totally see that. “He seems like a good guy.”

Rachel smiled affectionately at the thought of him. “Yeah, he is. And Ethan seems like a good guy, too.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said smiling. “He is.” She paused. “So can I ask you something personal about you and Rex?”

Rachel paused. “Maybe….what is it?”

“Did you guys really wait until you were eighteen to start dating?”

Rachel laughed. “Yeah,” she said. “We really did. He was completely freaked out by the thought of going to jail for statutory rape.” She shook her head and thought back to those early days of her relationship with him. “He didn’t even want to be alone with me for the first few months I knew him. I mean, obviously we were, but it still made him uncomfortable.”

“Well, there is kind of an…” Quinn trailed off, unsure of how she could be delicate with this.

Rachel chuckled. “Age difference?”

“Yeah.”

“I know, but he’s like a big kid himself. And he was really good to me. I was… kind of screwed up when we met and he was good to me. He could have taken advantage of me, I was completely naïve and new to the city and not in the best state of mind.”

Quinn hesitated. “Because of your dads?”

Rachel paused. “A little bit.”

Maybe a lot. Just because she wasn’t close to her fathers didn’t mean their deaths hadn’t affected her. She wasn’t torn apart by grief or anything-- in fact, it troubled her how easily she’d been able to square her shoulders, plaster a smile to her face and move on. But it still _hurt_ and though by the time they died, she’d lived a life that was essentially separate from them, just the mere fact they were alive made her feel _safe_. She had parents who would pay the mortgage and the electric bill, who’d leave her cash on the kitchen counter for her to use as she saw fit and paid for all her extracurriculars. It was just kind of comforting that they were there. She just felt _secure_ knowing she had parents who would take care of her, and even though they weren’t that demonstrative with their love, the fact they took care of her made her believe they loved her.

Once she lost them, she lost all that, too. She didn’t feel safe anymore and she came to view financial security as absolute security. And it was only recently in the last couple years since moving in with Rex and getting steady work that she felt she could breathe a little bit and found security in other things-- like having a boyfriend she was reasonable certain would not hurt her deliberately or that morning cup of coffee set in front of her that made her feel like the day had all sorts of good possibilities.

“But things are okay now?”

Rachel smiled. “Yes, actually. Better than okay. I really do have _everything_ I wanted.” She paused. “What about you? Is everything okay?”

Quinn smiled back. “Things are actually pretty good. I really can’t complain.”

“I’m glad.”

Quinn chuckled. “Me too.” She smiled. “I have to admit, I thought it was really weird you guys were dating. He’s so much older, but when we all hang out, I don’t even notice. He really is like a big kid.”

Rachel shook her head and rolled her eyes. “He is,” she said, good-naturedly complaining. “When we go shopping, he’s like this bull in a china shop because he has to _touch_ everything. Like, once we were in some antique shop and he broke a statue of Buddha. He took it home with him and now we still have the headless Buddha statue in the bathroom.”

“I wondered about that when we were at your place on Thanksgiving,” Quinn admitted. “But I was afraid to ask.”

Rachel laughed. “He’s always doing stuff like that. I mean, at first, I was kinda weirded out by him being so much older, too. But he’s always been good to me and I feel like we connect. So shouldn’t I be with someone who loves me and who gets me, even if he is a bit older than I am, right?”

“Right,” Quinn agreed.

“How did you and Ethan meet?”

“In college,” Quinn said. “We both went to UCSD but he graduated a few years ahead of me and he went to UCLA for med school. We were dating long-distance for a while. I was pretty sure I wanted to go to Columbia for grad school, but he finished med school before I graduated college, so he just came out here and waited for me.”

“He kind of reminds me of Rex,” Rachel said. “He seems like a big kid, too.”

Quinn laughed. “That’s because he is.”

Rachel joined in the laughter. “He’s sweet though.”

“He’s good for me,” Quinn admitted. “He says I’m a little uptight and--”

“You? Never,” Rachel deadpanned.

Quinn rolled her eyes and tossed her napkin at Rachel. “Don’t judge me!”

Rachel smirked. “Are you going to get an ‘only God can judge me’ tattoo?” she teased.

“Oh,” Quinn said. “I already have one of those.”

Rachel blinked. “You do?”

“Yes, it’s on my ass,” Quinn said with a straight face. “Why don’t you kiss it?”

Rachel’s forehead furrowed because it took her a moment to understand what Quinn meant ‘kiss my ass’ and not that Quinn actually had ‘only God can judge me’ tattooed on her butt. “Oh,” she said after a moment. “Well, as tempting as that offer is, I must decline tonight. However, I would be happy to accommodate your polite request at some other point in the future.”

She could play, too.

Quinn stared at Rachel, her mouth slightly open before she grinned. “Don’t be so sure it was a request. Maybe it was more of an order.”

Rachel raised an eyebrow. “You might find this odd considering my career as an actress which requires me to take orders, but I don’t take direction well.”

Quinn stared at her. “Why would I find that odd? We were in glee together. I remember what you were like.”

Rachel gave her a toothy smile. “So then you know.”

“Know that you find it difficult to take orders? Absolutely.”

“I guess we’d be badly matched considering you’re so bossy and I’m disinclined to follow orders.”

“ _I’m_ bossy?” Quinn asked with an incredulous laugh. “You--”

“I concede that I’m bossy, too,” Rachel said with a grin. “We would be badly matched so I suppose I must decline your offer of kissing your ass due entirely to the fact I be unable to satisfactorily follow your orders as you dicate.”

“Yeah, and I only like my ass kissed a certain way.”

Rachel laughed. “Sorry I can’t be more obsequious to your liking.”

“Me too,” Quinn agreed. “I wanted to be able to call you Senorita Nariz Marron.”

Rachel laughed. “Senorita Brown Nose?” she asked, taking a moment to translate it because it had been a very long time since she thought about Mr. Schuester’s lessons on basic Spanish vocabulary of colors and parts of the body. “Cute,” she drawled.

“I thought so.”

Rachel smiled. “So you’re a little uptight and--”

“Ethan says I’m uptight. I refuse to accept that. But he’s definitely the one with the better sense of humor.”

“Definitely.”

“Hey!”

“You said ‘definitely’ first!”

“I know, but you didn’t have to chime in!”

“I was just agreeing with you!”

“That’s what chiming in means!”

“Not really! Look it up!”

“Okay, I will!”

They looked at one another and laughed.

“Okay,” Quinn agreed. “I could probably have a better sense of humor. Ethan makes me laugh and keeps me from taking myself too seriously. It’s kind of nice because he’s really serious about his career and he’s so responsible-- he brags about his perfect credit score and how he’s never had a late payment in his life because he’s an incredible nerd. But he doesn’t take himself too seriously. I have fun with him.”

“You guys can be that Amy Grant song.”

“What Amy Grant song?”

“I forget the title, but it goes, ‘you like to dance and listen to the music, I like to sing with the band, you like your hands splashing in the ocean, I like my feet on the sand,’” Rachel sang. And then it goes, ‘you get brave when I get shy, just another reason why I think you could be so good for me,’” Rachel sang again. “It’s a song about opposites being complementary in a relationship.”

“I sort of gathered.” Quinn said dryly. “You still communicate primarily through song, don’t you?”

Rachel laughed. “Maybe,” she admitted. “Oh, and I just realized the title of that song is ‘Good for Me’ which really should have been obvious.”

“It really should have been,” Quinn agreed.

Rachel laughed and gave Quinn another toothy grin. “Want to get another cup of coffee?”

“I really shouldn’t, but I will,” Quinn said.

“Me neither, but I surrender to temptation.”

Quinn smiled at her and Rachel smiled back.  
  
\--

Rachel was accustomed to being alone-- she was an only child of parents who weren’t home much and who both traveled frequently for work. As a young child, she spent a lot of time in daycare, ballet lessons, tap dance lessons, Hebrew school and any other activity that could tide her over. She was a latchkey kid from the time she was ten because ten was when her fathers decided she was old enough to stay home alone.

She’d spent plenty of major holidays alone because both her fathers traveled a lot, either for work or for leisure and so being alone on holidays didn’t have the same emotional resonance that it clearly did for other people.

But her first Thanksgiving in New York was her hardest because she had _nowhere_ to go, though the dorm was mercifully open because there were plenty of students who couldn’t go home for that small window of time. She spent it alone and missing her fathers because even though it’d been years since they had a Thanksgiving together, they could usually be counted on for a text or a phone call, but she couldn’t even have that anymore.

She’d only known Rex for a few months, and she was still only seventeen, so they both agreed it would be inappropriate for her to go home with him. By Christmas of that year, she’d turned eighteen and she always had somewhere to go for holidays and breaks from school. Rex’s family adopted her as one of their own and so it’d been quite some time since she spent any holiday alone. There’d been times in the past when Rex was away filming during a holiday and she was still expected to go to Rex’s house.

She’d turned into sort of a Christmas Jew because Rex’s family was Catholic, but the holiday still didn’t hold much meaning to her. But the way the holiday seemed to completely shut down the world wasn’t lost on her and since she was alone for the first time in _years_ , she couldn’t help but feel a little melancholy despite the fact she didn’t mind being alone.

Still, it felt nice that Rex and his entire family called her on Christmas Day and spoke to her for an _hour_ and then _Ethan_ texted her to tell her to have a safe and happy holiday and then Quinn called and Rachel spoke to her for a while, too.

She was feeling a little melancholy and she missed her fathers even though they’d never celebrated a Christmas together, _ever_ because hello, _Jewish_ , when Quinn called her again.

“I forgot to tell you when we talked earlier,” Quinn said, immediately launching in after Rachel greeted her. “I ran into Mr. Schue yesterday-- Ms. Pillsbury is pregnant, by the way, with baby number three, and guess what? He’s getting promoted! Figgins took a job as headmaster at some fancy private school, so Mr. Schue is going to be Assistant Principal because Anderson is promoting to Principal! That means he’s going to be Sylvester’s boss!” Quinn started to cackle. “I bet she’s going to eat her own liver!”

“She’d eat her own liver but survive,” Rachel joked.

Quinn paused. “Hey. Are you okay?”

“Yes, why?”

“I don’t know. You sound kind of off. You sounded different from when we talked earlier.”

“No, I’m okay,” Rachel said. “So, yeah. Sylvester probably will eat her own liver, but she’d survive.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said. “She’d be even better than before. She’d gain nourishment from it.”

“Liver is supposed to be good for you. Although I tried it once as a child-- an animal liver, not my own, of course--”

“Of course,” Quinn interrupted dryly.

“And I found its texture and smell to be disgusting.”

“It is,” Quinn agreed. “Also, Sue Sylvester could eat her left arm and it would grow back.”

“Yeah. Sue Sylvester could survive the atom bomb.”

“She could _eat_ the atom bomb. You would just hear a little pop from her stomach.”

“Yeah, same thing with the hydrogen bomb,” Rachel said. “Pop!” she whispered quietly. “It would be the quietest explosion in the world because--.”

“It would want to be quiet because it’d be too scared of Sue.”

“Exactly what I was going to say,” she laughed. “And Pluto isn’t a planet anymore, but Sue Sylvester could be if she wanted to be.”

Quinn chuckled. “I am _so_ glad I’ll be gone before McKinley goes back into session. I don’t want to be there for that smackdown.”

“It’ll be as epic as the McCoys and the Hatfields.”

“Lindsay Lohan and sobriety.”

“Quinn!” Rachel exclaimed with a laugh.

“What? It’s true.”

“Fine,” Rachel said grudgingly. “Angelina and Jennifer.”

“David and Goliath.”

“Mr. Schue is so David in that scenario, despite the fact that in terms of official power and position, he’s Goliath.”

“She’s going to crush him.”

“With her pinky toe.”

“And she won’t even have broken a nail.”

“Poor Mr. Schue,” Rachel said. “And he has a wife and children.”

“We’ll have to send condolences when Sylvester tears his hair out and claws his eyes out.”

“And she’ll do it purely with the power of her mind.”

Quinn laughed. “Yeah. But I’m happy for him.”

“Me too.” Rachel paused. “I think I hear your mom in the background. Is she doing better? You said she was a little…you know.”

“Drunk?” Quinn said wryly. “Yeah, she took a nap and slept it off. She only had a couple drinks, so I don’t know why she seemed so drunk, but she’s sobered up.”

“Good,” Rachel said softly.

“It’s seriously my pet peeve when people can’t handle alcohol,” Quinn said quietly. “It’s why I get so mad at Ethan when he drinks too much. His personality doesn’t change like my mom’s does, but he’s so _stupid_.”

“I know what you mean,” Rachel said quietly. “One of my dads drank a little too much, too…” she paused. “He’d get….sloppy, and it always bothered me. I mean, I’ve been drunk before. A lot, actually,” she admitted wryly. “But it bugs me when Rex gets sloppy when he drinks. He drinks a lot though, and he’s mainly just fun and not sloppy. But when he gets sloppy, it makes my blood boil.”

“See? Ethan always says I overreact like at Hannah’s party, remember?”

“You weren’t overreacting,” Rachel said quietly.

“I feel like a bitch though for chewing him out about it, because he drinks, like, _once_ a month and it’s like, a beer. He’s only gotten really drunk maybe three times in our entire relationship but it’s really bothered me every time.”

“Do you want me to talk to Rex about it? I’ll tell him not to drink when they hang out.”

“No…” Quinn said, sounding uncertain. “I mean, I know they get drunk together, but it’s never bad. I don’t know why I’m making a big deal about this, it’s probably because I’m home.”

“Well…if you’re worried about Ethan doing something dumb while he’s out, Rex said that he’s not the kind of guy who would cheat on you, no matter how drunk he got.”

“I’m not really worried about that,” Quinn said softly. “I mean, maybe a little, but…” she sighed. “It’s really more my mom. She can get sloppy sometimes and it bugs me. I’m so proud of her for leaving my dad and going back to work and doing so much with herself, it’s just weird to me that she still drinks like this. I thought she drank like this because she was bored, but she’s got so much going on now.”

“Have you talked to her about it?”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t hear me, you know? I mean, I guess I should be glad she’s not out there drinking and driving, but I worry about her because I’m so far away and I can’t help her if she needs it.”

“Well, your sister’s there, right? She lives close by, doesn’t she?”

“Yeah, but my mom and I get along better.”

“It sounds like you expect a lot from yourself,” Rachel said gently.

“I think my expectations are reasonable.”

“They are,” Rachel assured. “It’s just…a lot.”

“She’s my mom,” Quinn said quietly.

Quinn learned at a young age that while she could not necessarily count on her mother, she wanted her mother to be able to count on her.

“I get that,” Rachel said softly. “I think you’re pretty incredible for thinking that way, actually.”

“Well, anyone would.”

“Not me.”

“Well…I mean, if your fathers…”

“No,” Rachel cut in gently. “I wouldn’t worry about them the way you worry about your mom even if they were alive. We were leading very separate lives when they died. I honestly didn’t have much of a relationship with either of them, so I guess I can’t really relate to what it’s like to worry about a parent the way you do. But I kind of admire you for it.”

“Oh stop,” Quinn said, scoffing softly.

“I do,” Rachel said.

“Well…thanks,” Quinn said. She paused and they were quiet for a while. “Anyway. I should go…”

“Yeah, me too. I have to check on Mr. Bun.”

“Mr. Bun?”

“Hannah’s dog. It’s the ugliest dog on earth. Its head is a completely different color from its body. Hannah claims it has vitiligo, but it’s also the _stupidest_ dog on earth. Mr. Bun is always hiding, even from Hannah and even Hannah is like, ‘where would a really stupid dog hide?’ I don’t get its monstrous appeal at all.”

Quinn laughed. “Where does it hide?”

“That’s just the thing, the only thing it’s good at is hiding. Anyway. I have to go to her place to check on it since she went to her grandparents’ house in New Hampshire. So I’ll talk to you later.”

“Yeah.” Quinn said, “I’ll call you when I get back to town. I’m coming back New Years’ Eve. Do you have plans? We’ll have dinner or something.”

“I don’t have plans,” Rachel said. “Rex likes to go out on New Years’ Eve, but I don’t really like to. Definitely call me, we can do something quiet, it that’s okay with you.”

“Quiet is definitely better. I don’t like to go out on New Years’ Eve either, because everyone is stupid drunk. We’ll go eat dinner somewhere and maybe stay in.”

“Maybe we can eat Mr. Bun.”

“Ew!” Quinn exclaimed with a laugh. “Gross. You’re _vegan_!”

“I’d eat this dog to spare the world from it.”

“Eww,” Quinn groaned. “How could you eat a dog that’s not even cute?”

“It’d be more of a loss to the world to eat a cute dog. I’m not going to eat a Pomeranian or a Yorkshire terrier or anything. But I’d totally eat Mr. Bun just to save the world from her grotesqueness.”  
  
“Wait, Mr. Bun is a girl?”

“Yes. Hannah was pretty terrible to this dog. Mr. Bun is like, fifteen years old.”

“Poor Mr. Bun. Hannah gave her a sexual identity crisis and now you want to eat her.”

“Well, I don’t want to eat her. I just said I would.”

“This conversation has taken a thoroughly disgusting turn.”

“I know,” Rachel said with a laugh. “When we go to dinner when you get back, _I’m_ choosing the restaurant.”

“No way, you’ll probably--”

“Gotta go! Bye!”

“Rachel, you’re not choosing!”

“Bye, Quinn! See you soon!”

“Say you’re not choosing!”

“I _am_ choosing! Anyway! See you later! Hanging up now because I have to check on the ugliest stupidest dog in the world!”

“You aren’t--”

“Bye!”

And then there was silence because Rachel had hung up.

Quinn groaned and texted Rachel immediately.

_You aren’t choosing! I don’t want to go somewhere and find out you brought Mr. Bun to the restaurant. BYO anything to a restaurant is not okay!_

Rachel texted back a few moments later.

 _Haha, just trust me._.

What made the whole thing particularly aggrieving for Quinn was the fact that Rachel typically did _not_ want to choose the restaurant because Rachel felt like everyone they knew in common mocked her for being vegan.

\--

Quinn came back six days later in time for New Years Eve and reluctantly followed Rachel to a vegan restaurant of Rachel’s choosing.

Rachel triumphantly crowed the entire walk back to her apartment because Quinn had to admit that Rachel’s choice in restaurants was perfectly legitimate.

\--  
After dinner, they returned to Rachel’s apartment.

Rachel stood with Quinn on her balcony looking out at the city lights and listening to the celebrations of the city.

Rachel sipped her Mexican coffee before puffing on an illicit cigarette. She exhaled. “The boys are coming back the day after tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said. She chuckled. “I can’t believe they finagled it to leave and come back together. Do you think we should be worried? Because they’re clearly in love.” She plucked the cigarette out of Rachel’s fingers and took a long drag.

“I think it will be hilarious if they come back with, like, matching friendship bracelets or something.”

Quinn laughed. “Yeah.”

Rachel took the cigarette back and puffed. “It’s going to be a new year,” she commented. “New hopes, new dreams, new expectations, all that kind of stuff.”

Rachel passed the cigarette back to Quinn who took a hit before speaking.

“Yeah, just like last year,” Quinn quipped.

Rachel chuckled, gave her a sidelong glance and grinned. “You have no sense of romance.”

“I’m just realistic,” Quinn said with a grin. She took another drag and exhaled. “I started smoking last year because it was my first year of law school, and I was so stressed out,” she admitted. “I quit when the year was finished.” She passed it back to Rachel.

Rachel took it and inhaled deeply and released a blue-white plume of air and smoke. “I only smoke socially, but even then, not much. It’s bad for my voice.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said, she took the cigarette back, took a drag and then held it up, squinting at it contemplatively. “These taste old.”

“I’m sure they are,” Rachel said, retrieving it and taking another drag. She blew out the smoke and watched it mingle with her own breath-- the air was so cold. She’d found the open pack of Parliament Lights in the junk drawer of the kitchen while she was searching for some matches to re-light the pilot light on the stove. Once she found them and the matches, she was struck with the craving.

“Do you even remember buying them?” Quinn asked. She took a sip of her drink.

Rachel took another drag and exhaled before she spoke. “The last time I bought cigarettes, I was eighteen and it was only to prove that I could,” Rachel said with a grin. “Rex quit smoking cigarettes two years ago-- he just has the occasional cigar now, so I think this pack is from then.”

Quinn reached for it and inhaled deeply and then blew it out. “This tastes gross now. I hope you have some gum or something.”

“I have some jellybeans in the cupboard.”

“Jellybeans?”

Rachel shrugged. “I have very specific cravings sometimes.”

Quinn laughed. She flicked the cherry out of the cigarette. “What do I do with this?” she asked holding up the cigarette butt. She didn’t want to litter.

“I’ll take it,” Rachel said. “I’ll flush it.”

“Okay,” Quinn said, passing it to her.

“Let’s go back inside.”

“Yeah.”

\--

Rachel flushed the cigarette butt and came back after washing her hands. “That was disgusting, I remember now why I quit.”

“I know, right?”

“Let me get those jelly beans.”

“I’m going to wash my hands, too, is that okay?”

“Sure,” Rachel said. “You know where the bathroom is. But don’t forget to greet the headless Buddha, he knows you’re there!”

“That’s so creepy.”

They met up again at the couch. Rachel passed Quinn the packet of jellybeans and she opened them as Rachel turned on the TV.

“We’re having an old lady New Years,” Quinn commented.

“Yeah, but I really didn’t want to go out. Did you?”

“No.”

Quinn bit into a yellow jellybean and savored the hard candy shell. It’d been _years_ since she had a jellybean and she had no idea why except for the fact that it wasn’t the kind of thing she looked for when she went grocery shopping.

“Ew,” Quinn said, holding up a black jellybean and looking at it in distaste. “I hate the black licorice ones.”

“I don’t mind it,” Rachel said, turning her head. She opened her mouth wide.

Quinn tossed it toward Rachel’s mouth and was pleased when the candy went in. “You can have all the black licorice ones because they’re gross. But I’m so fighting you for the peach ones, because peaches are delicious.”

Rachel smiled. “Black licorice has never had a fair shake. I like giving things which are much-maligned a second glance. Sometimes they surprise me.”

“Yeah, well, I guess you’re just more open-minded than I am.”

“Well, that much is obvious.”

Quinn smacked her hand against Rachel’s thigh.

Rachel giggled. “What?” she asked. “It’s true.”

“Whatever,” Quinn groused.

\--

They counted down softly together as they watched the ball drop in Times Square. The streets were loud and frenzied outside the apartment Rachel shared with Rex.

“3…2…1…” Quinn and Rachel chanted together.

They turned toward one another.

“Happy New Year,” they said to one another, grinning.

Then they leaned toward one another for cheek kisses, but they moved in at similar angles and their lips consequently brushed together. They each pulled back.

“Oh, oh,” Rachel said, cheeks pink. “Sorry!”

“No. I‘m sorry,” Quinn said. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s…it’s okay. It was a total accident. Sorry!”

“Yeah, it’s totally okay,” Quinn agreed. She blushed and started laughing. “Too bad Rex and Ethan missed that, huh?”

Rachel laughed and rolled her eyes. “Right? If they had, the story would have become hyper exaggerated and ten years from now they’d be talking about how we were…” she trailed off.

“Like, acting a scene out from _The L Word_.”

“Exactly.”

“Boys,” Quinn said shaking her head.

“Yeah,” Rachel agreed. “Boys.”  



	4. Chapter 4

  
The beginning of the New Year became busy for both Quinn and Rachel as Quinn returned to school and Rachel continued performing ten shows a week. They communicated primarily through text messages and the occasional e-mail exchange which typically occurred after Quinn chastised Rachel for sending her one of those email forwards invariably about a dying or missing child.

They also passed messages to one another through their boyfriends who continued to hang out whenever they each had free time.

“Rex said Rachel wanted me to tell you she watched _The Sound of Music_ last night and she thought of you,” Ethan told Quinn.

“Really? Did she say why?” Quinn asked, perplexed.

“She thinks you’re ‘suspiciously Teutonic-looking.’” Ethan said with a grin.

Quinn rolled her eyes, but laughed. She texted Rachel that night

_Suspiciously Teutonic-looking?_

Rachel texted back.

_Well, you kind of are. What kind of last name is Fabray anyway? In terms of origin_

Quinn sighed. Her mother’s side of the family were all Swedes, but her father’s side of the family was more mixed-- Dutch, English but mainly German.

 _Most of my dad’s side of the family is from Germany_ Quinn admitted via text.

Rachel’s text came immediately-- its tone recognizably triumphant.

_Ha! See! Teutonic looking!_

Quinn rolled her eyes. That girl was still insane.

 _So’s your face_ , she texted back, because she felt about 10 years old.

Rachel called her promptly. “Quinn Fabray, did you just ‘so’s your face’ me as though we were eight year olds?”

“Yes. So’s your face!”

“That is highly immature.”

“So’s your face.”

“And ridiculous. It makes no sense.”

“So’s your face always makes sense.”

“Quinn, really. That is _so_ juvenile.”

“So’s your face.”

Rachel laughed. “So’s _your_ face. Now it’s back in your face!”

Quinn laughed. “So’s your face,” she dead-panned. Then she started laughing again. “I can’t believe people think I have no sense of humor.”

“So’s your face,” Rachel said.

Quinn laughed. “See? It’s hilarious.”

“You have the sense of humor of an eight year old boy,” Rachel said. “No wonder you had to cover that up with a humorless, stern façade.”

“Hey!”

“It’s kind of true, Quinn.”

“Whatever. I’m going to tell on you. Expect a scolding from Rex because when I tell Ethan about this, I’m going to fake cry.”

“See? Eight year old.”

Quinn laughed in spite of herself. “Shut up!”

“You just keep proving my point,” Rachel said.

“Whatever. You’re just mad I so’s-your-faced you so appropriately and you couldn’t do it back to me in a way that made sense.”

“I thought ‘so’s your face’ always made sense,” Rachel said dryly. “Anyway. I have to go, but let’s talk again soon.”

“Yeah, okay. Bye.”

“Bye. So’s your face!”

Quinn heard Rachel’s loud laughter as the brunette hung up. Quinn rolled her eyes and chuckled.

\--

The two couples got together one night toward the end of January for a double date.

“So’s your face!” Rachel burst out before anyone could greet one another.

Rex and Ethan looked at her quizzically, but Quinn laughed.

“No,” she said. “So’s _your_ face.”

Rex and Ethan exchanged a look and shook their heads. They greeted one another warmly, but without the need to say ‘so’s your face,’ and walked into the restaurant

“I can’t believe it’s taken this long for all of us to get together!” Rex exclaimed.

Rachel smiled fondly. “Rex, it’s still January. It really hasn’t been that long.”

“Well, baby. I’m much older than you are, so the passage of time means something entirely different to me.”

Rachel slapped his shoulder. “Oh, stop,” she said softly, grinning up at him. But she knew even after all these years together, he had a bigger problem with the age difference than she did.

The dinner went on, and Quinn thought about how it wasn’t such a bad way to pass the time-- in fact, it was very good. Just a few short months ago she’d resented Ethan’s friendship with Rex because it reconnected her to Rachel. It’s not that she disliked Rachel, it was just that she felt like her life was already pretty full and she didn’t want to take on a reminder from her past.

But she loved Ethan and Rex was a good friend to him, and Quinn appreciated that, so she never protested these double dates or the nights out. At first, Rachel didn’t seem any happier than she was about their boyfriends’ bromance. But Quinn had to admit the more time she spent with Rachel, the more she _liked_ Rachel, especially when Rachel seemed to relax and be more herself instead of sort of detached and excessively polite.

“Babes,” Ethan whispered, pulling Quinn aside after she and Rachel returned to the table after using the restroom together. They were still debating ordering dessert. “Do you mind if I go to the Grand Havana Room with Rex tonight? He invited me and I’ve never been because it’s members only.”

She smiled fondly at him. He always seemed so in awe of Rex. “I’m not the boss of you.”

“Sometimes you say you are.”

“Sometimes I am,” she said with a grin. “Of course you can go.”

“Cool,” he said with a smile. “Rex said we can cab it and Rachel can give you a ride home since they brought his car.”

“Not a problem,” Quinn murmured. “Have fun.”

“Rex!” Ethan exclaimed. “Quinn says I can go.”

Rex grinned at him and put his hands in the air, shaking them. “Yay.”

Rachel looked at her boyfriend affectionately and stroked his face. “Be good to Ethan, okay?” she murmured in his ear. “He’s a nice guy, take care of him tonight. Don’t let him drink too much. Just a couple, okay?”

He nuzzled her nose with his own. “I’m always good to Ethan. He’s like the little brother I never had. We’ll have a few drinks and a few cigars and then I’ll be home, okay, baby? We won’t stay out too late.”

“Okay, thanks,” she murmured.

They decided on splitting one dessert since they were all fairly fully and the table gently mocked Rachel for making their choices more limited due to her ‘alternate’ vegan lifestyle. After settling the tab, Rex and Ethan were on their way, playfully shoving each other as they walked down the street.

“I think Ethan is in love and it’s not with me,” Quinn joked.

Rachel laughed. “I know how you feel,” she said. “I really think Rex _loves_ Ethan. I mean, not, you know, like _that_ , but his friends are mainly women. All his male friends are guys he grew up with or he’s known for 20 years. He doesn’t make new guy friends.”

“I know, neither does Ethan. It’s like they’re twins separated at birth.”

“Yeah,” Rachel said. “Hey, it’s still pretty early and the boys are having fun. Do you want to go watch a movie? Or do you have a lot of studying to do?”

She gestured with her head to the movie theatre across the street.

“I totally have a lot of studying to do. So let’s go watch a movie.”

Rachel stared at her for a moment and then laughed. “Okay, but don’t blame me if you’re unprepared.”

Quinn laughed. “I _will_ blame you,” she teased. “I just remembered that you were in my dream last night. “I dreamt we were in school together and we had a pop quiz which I _failed_ and you taunted me. I know I dreamt in color, too, because the ‘F’ on my paper was bright red.”

Rachel giggled. “I wouldn’t have taunted you! Though I might have secretly judged your failure.”

Quinn laughed softly. “Your judgment is never secret,” she declared.

A cold gust of wind made them both shiver and step closer to one another. Quinn linked her arm with Rachel’s as they jaywalked across the street to reach the theatre.

“It’s cold,” Rachel noted.

“It’s nice though. I like cold weather better.”

“Me too.”

“Remember that ice storm in grade school?” Quinn asked. “The power was out for weeks.”

Rachel laughed. “The power was _not_ out for weeks. It was out for a couple days.”

Quinn frowned. “It felt forever.”

“Bad things always seem to last forever when you’re a kid.”

Rachel sounded a little sad and so Quinn moved in closer.

“So’s your face,” she said, though she did not relinquish her hold on Rachel’s arm.

Rachel laughed and gently shoved her. “You’re a crazy person.”

“I know.”  
\--

They were standing in line to buy tickets still ‘so’s your face’-ing one another when the teenagers in front of them turned around to look at them, smiled, told them they said ‘so’s your face,’ too and then turned back around.

“See?” Quinn said, pleased. “They say ‘so’s your face,’ too.”

“Yeah, but they’re kids. They’re supposed to.”

Quinn laughed and swatted at Rachel’s arm. “I concede.”

\--

“I think we were the only ones who laughed,” Rachel said softly as they exited the theatre together.

“That’s because it wasn’t a comedy,” Quinn said dryly.

“I know, but that was just an uncanny resemblance to Sue Sylvester. It was kind of hard not to laugh even if she was a bipolar paranoid schizophrenic who stole her daughter’s baby when she went off her medication.”

Quinn laughed. “I know. It just goes to show that just because you’re a bipolar paranoid schizophrenic doesn’t mean you aren’t an asshole even when you are on your meds, because she was an asshole even when she was in her right mind.”

“Exactly, and she kind of reminded me of Sylvester, so it really was funny.”

“Exactly. People shouldn’t have become so impatient with us.”

“Though it is understandable,” Rachel said. She could acknowledge she and Quinn should have been quieter whilst snickering during the film’s most dramatic scenes.

“I guess,” Quinn said.

“Come on,” Rachel said, gently capturing Quinn by the arm and pulling her. “The car is this way.”

\--

“It’s funny, but I thought Rex would drive something flashier than this,” Quinn commented as they drove to her apartment. “I remember thinking so the night of Hannah’s party.”

“Why?” Rachel asked wryly. “ _I’m_ allegedly his mid-life crisis.”

Quinn laughed. “Yeah, you are,” she teased.

Rachel gave her a side-long glance and smiled crookedly. She turned her attention back to the road. “He actually has another car which is what you’d expect from him. But he really loves the Audi.”

“It’s a nice car.”

“Yeah.”

“So…” Quinn said. “You and Rex have been going out for a while, are--”

“Oh, not you too,” Rachel groaned.

“What?”

“You’re going to ask if we’re going to get married anytime soon, right?”

Quinn blushed. “Yeah.”

“People ask _all_ the time. I know that we’ve been going out a long time and I do _not_ want to break up, but I don’t want to get married, either. I feel marriage is completely overrated and generally unnecessary, although I believe whole-heartedly in marriage equality. I’m honestly not ready to commit myself to him that way and I don’t feel that I should have to. I’m twenty-three and he’s turning forty-one soon and no one harassed him about why he wasn’t getting married when _he_ was twenty-three.”

“I agree with you.” Quinn said. “I’m not ready to get married either, but I haven’t been dating E as long as you’ve been dating Rex.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready for a commitment as vast as marriage. Rex hasn’t asked and we haven’t really broached the topic except to tell his parents it’s not within our plans yet. I’m not negating the possibility, it just won’t be soon. There’s a lot I want to do with my career first before I even think about marriage.” Rachel paused. “What about you and E? I know you’re not ready, but do you think you’d marry him?”

“Maybe,” Quinn said. “I’ve always wanted to get married eventually. But I want to finish school, find a job…you know, actually _do_ stuff first before I do all that. Ethan’s great, I just don’t think I’m ready to even think about it yet because there’s still so much other stuff I’d like to do.”

“Exactly,” Rachel said, smiling at Quinn.

Quinn smiled back and the two drove in comfortable silence until they reached Quinn’s apartment.

“You want to come up for a while?” Quinn asked.

Rachel smiled at her. “Next time,” she said. “You should study and I should go to bed otherwise I will get very unattractive eye bags.”

Quinn chuckled. “Okay, well…” she leaned in close and gave Rachel a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek. “We’ll get together soon, okay?”

“Sure.”

\--

“I am so fucking sorry, baby.”

Rachel laughed softly, because it was at least the twentieth time Rex apologized. “It’s _okay_.”

“It’s Valentine’s Day! You love Valentine’s Day.”

“I know,” Rachel drawled. “You’ll just have to make it up to me when you get back.”

“God save me,” he muttered.

“Hey!”

“Well? It’s kinda true.”

“Whatever,” she muttered with a laugh. “Anyway. You’re only gone for another week. We can celebrate it then. And anyway, you did get me flowers.”

“Well, it was the least I could do. If I hadn’t done at least that much, I think you would have made a voodoo doll of me and messed with my junk.”

“I have an investment in your junk,” Rachel pointed out mildly. “I think I would have cursed you with something else though. Like mysteriously unspecific eye discomfort or something.”

“You are evil.”

“I know. Anyway. Be safe.”

“I will. You have fun on girls’ night with Hannah and Quinn.”

“I will. I’ll see you soon.”

“Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Rachel hung up and slipped her phone back in her purse. She smiled at Quinn who smiled back.

“How’s Rex?”

“He’s good,” Rachel said. “I’m glad that you’re here, but I’m sorry that E had to work tonight.”

“He’s not much of a Valentine’s Day guy,” Quinn said. “So it’s okay. I’m kind of over Valentine’s Day.”

“I still love it.”

“It’s because you’re still kind of an attention whore.”

Rachel stared at her for a moment and then laughed. “Yeah,” she admitted. She glanced at Quinn’s wall clock and huffed impatiently. “Where is she? We told her to meet us at 7, because we knew she’d be at least a half hour late and it’s already 8!”

“Our reservation isn’t until 9,” Quinn said. “She’ll make it in time for us to get to the restaurant.”

“This is the one aspect of her personality I have difficulty in accepting,” Rachel said. “She is very unreliable.”

“At least she’s reliably unreliable.”

“It’s really not the same, Quinn.”

The blonde grinned at her. “I know, but I just like playing the devil’s advocate.”

“You just like provoking a reaction out of me.”

“That too.”

Rachel laughed. Then she brightened and perked up when there was a very welcome knock on the door.

“ _Finally_!”

Rachel got up from Quinn’s couch and practically skipped to the door and threw it open.

“ _Finally!_ ”

Hannah grinned. “And if a double decker bus, crashes into us, to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die, and if a ten-ton truck kills the both of us, to die by your side, well, the pleasure, the privilege is mine,” she sang.

Rachel was unimpressed. “Why are you serenading us with morbidly maudlin Smith lyrics?”

Hannah grinned. “Because it’s Valentine’s Day, so it fits.”

Rachel chuckled. “You’re tardy.”

Quinn greeted her. “Hey, Han.”

“Hey.”

“I’ll make you a cosmo,” Quinn said, as she left to mix the drink, but was still within earshot.

Hannah grinned. “This feels like _Sex in the City_ but profoundly more sad ass.”

“This girls’ night was your idea,” Rachel pointed out.

“I know,” Hannah said. “That’s because the only thing more sad ass than a girls’ night on Valentine’s Day is being all sad and lonely that your boyfriend is away having to reshoot scenes from his last movie or has to work at the hospital.”

“That was unnecessarily specific,” Rachel said miffed. “It felt very pointed.”

“That’s because it was pointed.”

Quinn laughed and came back, handing Hannah the pink drink. “Leave Rachel alone, you jerk.”

“I was mocking you, too,” Hannah pointed out.

“I know, but I’m okay with that.”

Hannah laughed and Rachel beamed at Quinn.

\--

“So,” Hannah said. “Were you guys friends in high school?”

Rachel and Quinn released identical snorts of derision.

No,” they said together.

“Why not?”

“She,” Quinn said, pointing to Rachel, “was an obnoxious, cutthroat, didactic diva.”

“And she,” Rachel said, pointing to Quinn, “was a repressed, bitchy, sadistic cheerleader.”

“Well,” Hannah said slowly. “What’s so different now?”

Rachel and Quinn laughed.

\--

When Rachel really thought about it, it honestly hadn’t been that long since high school, but her life was so completely 180 degrees different. She was living in New York, exactly the way she used to dream, doing exactly what she wanted to do since she was four. She had a boyfriend who was kind to her and doted on her. Even if she was still unsure if anyone genuinely liked her, at least no one was Slushieing her or insulting her and now that the ‘starfucker’ comments seemed to have dwindled into nothing, she was even happier.

She had to admit that she was still a little obnoxious, though she made an effort to tone it down, she was still cutthroat because she would do what she had to, short of true sabotage, to get a part she really wanted and she’d probably always be a little didactic, but that was because she was committed to the betterment of society and she thought a little education would go a long way. Diva was definitely an appropriate description. Not too long ago, her feelings would have been hurt by the way Quinn described her, despite the fact that it was true. But Quinn didn’t seem to mean any malice and therein lay the difference-- it just couldn’t hurt her feelings when there wasn’t any malice involved.

She had to admit that all the years in New York had given her a thicker emotional skin and life was much easier when her feelings weren’t constantly hurt by even the most gentle of criticisms.

At first, she resented Quinn Fabray resurfacing into her life and she wanted to pummel Hannah _in the face_ for facilitating their re-connection. Now she _liked_ Quinn and considered Quinn to be a friend-- and she really didn’t have many of those. It’s not that either of them changed much from high school, but she’d mellowed and Quinn seemed kinder and Rachel supposed those changes were enough to make friendship possible.

Looking back on it, they probably could have been friends in high school, too, if either of them had just been a little less devoted to perpetuating their personas. She kind of regretted it, because it would have made high school a lot easier, but at the same time, it was what it was, and it really wasn’t so bad.

They finished dinner and then walked to a wine bar where they got a few drinks. Quinn and Rachel decided to call it a night, but Hannah, a confirmed bachelorette, caught her second wind and phoned one of her many single male friends who came out to meet her.

“You guys go on,” Hannah said, linking arms with him. She smiled widely at her male companion for the evening. “Hi Danny.”

Quinn and Rachel looked at one another and exchanged wry grins.

“Come on,” Quinn said, pulling Rachel by the arm. “We can go back to my place and have another drink and watch TV or something.”

Rachel smiled. “Okay.”

“You guys are like this really old anti-social couple,” Hannah commented with a smile. “You know, like, two people with complementary personality disorders finding one another and then holing up in their hovel. That’s you guys, except, without the couple part.”

Quinn rolled her eyes. “Come by if you drink too much and need a place to crash, okay?” she asked.

Hannah smiled. “Thanks, but I won’t.”

They said their goodbyes and then Rachel and Quinn were out into the night air.

“He was so not cute,” Quinn commented when they were walking back to Quinn’s apartment four blocks away.

“ _So_ not,” Rachel agreed with a laugh.  
\--

They got back to Quinn’s apartment and immediately sprawled out on the sofa with a bag of jelly beans and a bottle of wine.

“You got me craving jelly beans since New Years’ Eve,” Quinn complained good-naturedly. “But you will be happy to see that I put aside all the black licorice ones for you since you like them and all. They’re in a separate bag in my kitchen. You can take it home with you.”

Rachel laughed. “How thoughtful of you,” she murmured wryly, “giving me unwanted jellybeans that you find detestable”

Quinn pulled out a black jellybean and looked at it in distaste. “Here,” she said, “open up.”

Rachel turned her head and opened her mouth wide.

Quinn tossed the jellybean, but missed  
.  
“Way to throw,” Rachel said, “I thought you were the more athletic one between the two of us.”

“I _am_ the more athletic one between the two of us. You wouldn’t have even been able to get the general vicinity of my mouth.”

Rachel’s mouth dropped open in mock outrage and she threw a black licorice jellybean toward Quinn. It moved toward Quinn’s mouth, but the blonde dodged the candy whilst squealing and covering her mouth.

“Rachel!” she whined. “You know I hate black licorice!” She threw a jellybean at Rachel.

Rachel opened her mouth and caught the jellybean and beamed. She was still chewing her jellybean when she threw one at Quinn and it went in. Rachel swallowed her candy, victoriously punched the air and crowed boisterously. Quinn rolled her eyes in fond exasperation, but she chewed the candy and wondered what happened to her life when this was considered a good Valentine’s Day.

They spent the next few minutes throwing jellybeans into one another’s mouths and the next few minutes after that picking jellybeans out of Quinn’s couch cushions and off the floor.

“Here,” Rachel said, after digging through the cushion. “I found a JFK half dollar,” she tossed it toward Quinn who caught it and pocketed it.

“I’m rich.” Quinn declared wryly.

They passed the time watching television and drinking a few glasses of wine. Quinn was mid-sip when she saw Rachel glance at her phone and emit a horrified gasp.

“What’s wrong?” Quinn asked after hurriedly swallowing a mouthful of wine.

“It’s almost 4am,” Rachel squeaked. “I have a 7am rehearsal!” She jumped to her feet just as Quinn released a horrified gasp of her own.

“Seriously?” Quinn said.

“Yes!” Rachel said, she leaned down and pressed a hurried peck to Quinn’s cheek and straightened up again. “I’ll see you later. I have to go,” she said.

She was backing away when Quinn reached out with her leg and hooked her calf behind Rachel’s waist and pulled the brunette closer.

“Stay here,” Quinn said quietly. “You can borrow anything of mine that you need. We’ve had a lot to drink and it’s late.”

“That’s dumb,” Rachel protested. “I can just--”

“Drive home?” Quinn asked, raising an eyebrow. “We both drank too much. Stay the night. I’ll even let you have the first shower. And I have an extra toothbrush.”

Rachel hesitated, but then smiled. “Okay,” she agreed.

\--

“Okay,” Quinn said. “Here’s a pillow and some blankets. My couch is _really_ comfortable, so I don’t think you’ll have a problem falling asleep.”

“I know,” Rachel said softly. “I’ll probably be gone before you get up, so I’ll just lock the bottom lock when I leave, okay?”

“Sure,” Quinn said. “But I get up pretty early. Come in and say goodbye before you go.”

Rachel smiled. “Goodnight, Quinn. Thanks.”

“Goodnight,” Quinn said, she gave Rachel a quick hug. “Let me know if you need something,” she said, playfully pulling Rachel’s wet hair before stepping away.

“Okay,” Rachel said.  
\--

Rachel was already gone when Quinn woke up at 6:05am. She walked into the living room, bleary-eyed and expecting to see Rachel on the couch getting ready to leave, but instead found her blanket neatly folded with the pillow on top of it. There was a note on top of the pillow and Quinn snatched it up and read it.

_Quinn,_

_I didn’t want to wake you. Sorry! Anyway._  
Thanks, I had loads of fun last night. But I can’t  
sleep anywhere but home and I need to go on my  
run and get to work. Next dinner is on me.  
Have a great day!

_-R._

She had to admit she was a little disappointed that Rachel left without saying goodbye, but she set the note on her coffee table and went back to bed. She didn’t have her first class for a few more hours.

She texted Rachel when she woke up.

_Hey, sorry we lost track of time last night-- hope you aren’t too tired today_

The reply came a couple hours later in the middle of class.

Her phone vibrated to announce the text message and Quinn peered up at the professor before quickly checking her phone. She saw Rachel’s name and unconsciously smiled and bit her lower lip.

_I’m fine. I hope you’re okay, too. It was fun. Let’s hang out soon. We’ll just have to be more conscientious of time next time._

She was going to text back, but she became distracted by having to pay attention to her professor who was now eyeing her.  
\--

They called, texted and emailed one another intermittently over the next few days, but the interactions were always brief-- ‘hey, how are you? I’m good, too,’ and a few weeks went by until they saw one another again.

Rachel walked into the restaurant, glanced around for Rex, Quinn and Ethan and did not see any of them, and so chose to walk into the restaurant’s bar to wait for her tardy dinner companions. Rex and Ethan both texted her to tell her they were running late, so she’d primarily searched for Quinn. Once at the bar, she saw a blonde woman sitting on a stool at the side of the bar and smiled widely. She just knew it was Quinn, even though the blonde had her back to Rachel.

She walked toward Quinn and put her hand on Quinn and brought her head close to Quinn’s. “Hey, stranger,” she murmured.

It’d been a while since they saw one another.

Quinn turned her head and smiled, their cheeks grazed. “Hi, stranger.”

Rachel took the empty stool next to Quinn. “Hi,” she greeted again. “The boys are late,” she commented.

“You and Rex didn’t come together?”

“I came from the theatre and Rex is coming from set.”

“Oh,” Quinn said. “Ethan texted me and said he’s running a little late, but he’ll be here soon.”

“Yes, he sent me the same text.” She sat down, signaled the bartender and ordered her drink when he came. “Rex is running late, too.”

“Rex hates being late,” Quinn chuckled.

“I know,” Rachel said with a laugh. “So how was your day?”

“Good. Yours?”

“It was good, too.” She smiled at the bartender when he set her drink down and took a sip.

“You only had a matinee show today, right?”

Rachel was sipping her drink when Quinn spoke and so Rachel only nodded in response. She swallowed and blushed. “Sorry,” she said, wiping at her mouth with a napkin. “Just one show today. But I have two for the rest of the week.”

“I’ve told you this, but _I_ really couldn’t do it.”

Rachel smiled at her. “I think you could if you wanted it.”

Quinn chuckled. “You know, back when we were in school, I always thought if any of us was really going to make it out of Lima, it’d be you.”

Rachel grinned at her. “Really? I thought it would be you.”

Quinn looked at her dubiously. “You always said you had a stronger, more appealing voice than I did when we were in glee together, which, you know, was true. Now you’re telling me you thought I’d be the one to make it on Broadway over you?”

Rachel looked almost offended. “Of course not,” she said bluntly. “My voice was stronger than yours.”

Quinn rolled her eyes. “Of course.”

“I just meant, you know, in general, you were very ambitious and I really thought you were going to make it out of Lima.” Rachel smiled crookedly. “I was committed to getting out of there, but I had doubts, too.”

“You never showed you had doubts.”

“Well, one’s inner most doubts aren’t the sort of thing you broadcast to the world, Quinn. They’re really the sort of thing you suppress and repress until they go away.”

Quinn privately thought if Rachel had been willing to show a little more of that vulnerability instead of masking it with obnoxious self-promotion, Rachel’s high school experience may have been a bit gentler. But Rachel didn’t seem all that worse for the wear, so it was a non-issue now.

“It’s nice to know you have such an emotionally healthy perspective on life, Rachel.”

“Thank you, Quinn,” Rachel beamed, seeming to either miss or ignore Quinn’s sarcasm.

Quinn snorted and erupted into giggles. She took a few sips of her drink and set it down. She happened to glance behind her and brightened when she saw Ethan and Rex. She set her hand on Rachel’s thigh. “The boys are here,” she said, gesturing with her chin.

Rachel turned around and smiled when she saw Rex and Ethan walking toward them.

“Rex looks like Halloween,” she commented, taking in his white shirt, orange button down shirt, black pants and brown leather jacket.

Quinn paused and giggled. “He totally does!”

“All hail the Pumpkin King!” Rachel greeted, throwing her arms out toward him. She smiled at Ethan. “Hey E.”

“Hey Rach,” he greeted as he kissed Quinn on the cheek.

Rex looked at Rachel blankly. “Why am I the Pumpkin King? Because Halloween is my favorite holiday?”

“No, because you _look_ like Halloween.” She smiled at him. “This is Halloween, this is Halloween,” she sang. She exchanged a look with Quinn.

Quinn laughed and thought of the night they met at Hannah’s in which they watched _The Nightmare Before Christmas_ on Rachel’s iPod whilst sharing a pair of headphones and hiding in Hannah’s bathtub.

“In this town we call home, everyone hail to the pumpkin song!” Quinn and Rachel sang.

Rex looked down at his ensemble and rolled his eyes. “I am okay with that assessment.”

Ethan chuckled and put pulled Quinn closer, playfully blowing a raspberry against her neck. She squealed and pushed him away.

“You really do look like Halloween,” Ethan said with a laugh. He put his hand up for Rachel to slap in a high-five.

Rex clutched his chest dramatically. “E tu, Ethan?” he asked with a grin.

Ethan slapped Rex’s back. “Sorry, but it’s true.”

Rex grinned at Rachel. “Look at what you started.”

She laughed. “Sorry,” she said. She paused and beamed at Ethan. “But it’s true.”

Once they finished dinner, Quinn contemplated gauging everyone else’s interest in doing something else, but everyone else seemed like they wanted to just go home for the night. She had to admit it was a little bit of a disappointment because she just wasn’t ready for the night to end yet.

“See you soon,” Rachel said, pulling Quinn in for a hug and kissing Quinn’s cheek.

“Yeah,” Quinn echoed. “See you soon.”  
\--

‘Soon’ was approximately three weeks later when Quinn and Rachel met for a late dinner after one of Rachel’s shows.

“Hey,” Quinn murmured, gently putting her hand on Rachel’s shoulder. “So this is the last two weeks of your show.”

“Yes,” Rachel said slowly, looking at Quinn in confusion. “Are you informing me of this, because quite frankly, I already knew.”

Quinn laughed and swatted at Rachel’s shoulder. “You’re a jerk,” she complained good-naturedly.

Rachel gave her a toothy grin. “I’m aware of this.”

“We should hang out more when you’re done,” Quinn murmured. “Since you’ll be free for a while until your next project.”

“Which will undoubtedly be soon,” Rachel said, again with a toothy grin.

Quinn rolled her eyes. “Undoubtedly,” she echoed.

“We should _definitely_ hang out more,” Rachel said sincerely. She smiled at Quinn. “I will monopolize all of your free time. I will be a time bandit.”

“Great,” Quinn said dryly. She laughed warmly and tweaked Rachel’s nose.

Rachel released a little squeak of surprise and then made a groan in complaint. “Quinn!”

“Sorry,” Quinn laughed, without looking even remotely apologetic.

\--

Quinn looked at her professor and then discretely began texting Rachel.

_I had to skip lunch today and all I want is a BLT from Westville, and I don’t get out of class for another two hours and I don’t have enough time to leave campus to get one before my next class and come back. And I can’t get one after school because they stop serving it at a certain time. I am so frustrated_

Rachel’s response was prompt-- it always was now that _RENT_ had finished its run. Quinn and Ethan had seen the very last show and it truly was as phenomenal as everyone said it was. But now it seemed that Rachel was bored out of her mind because her responses to texts and emails were way too prompt.

_Why did you skip lunch? That isn’t very healthy, Quinn. Good nutrition should be a part of everyone’s lives, and that includes not skipping meals. Also, eating at regular intervals aids in regulating one’s metabolism. You really shouldn’t skip meals, especially lunch_

Quinn rolled her eyes. Leave it to Rachel to miss the point entirely. She glanced at the professor as she texted. She did not want to get caught.

_I had to meet with a professor, that’s why. You’re missing the point! I’m so hungry I think I want to eat my left arm. I can’t concentrate because I’m fixated on that BLT_

Rachel’s response was again very prompt.

_That was exactly my point. You wouldn’t be in such a ravenous, distracted condition had you consumed a proper lunch or at least eaten a granola bar before class._

Quinn rolled her eyes. She couldn’t believe this woman sometimes.

_I’m ignoring you now. But I just want to point out that granola bars are for vegan hippie actresses like you. So there._

Quinn wanted to laugh when she saw Rachel’s response-- she could almost imagine Rachel’s befuddled but self-righteously angry confusion.

 _That was highly unnecessary due to the fact it was merely a suggestion of possible alternatives you had to starvation. Secondly, granola bars have been embraced by people from a variety of food-related stances, not just the ‘vegan hippie actress’ category which you so adroitly classified me into. Thirdly, I accept that you are ignoring me now_.

However the moment Quinn’s class was over, she received a call from Rachel.

“Hey,” Quinn drawled. “Did you call me to lecture me about the merits and wide-spread appeal of granola?”

Rachel’s laughter was warm. “Certainly. But where’s your class? I came to keep you company for a while.”

“You’re seriously on campus?”

“Yes, and I’m nearby. I asked someone where the law school classes are typically held.”

“You tell me where you are and I’ll come to you.”

“Okay,” Rachel said. “Hold on for a sec.”

Rachel determined her location and they talked for a few minutes as Quinn walked to meet her. She spotted Rachel instantly, leaning her back against a pillar.

“Hey,” Quinn said with a grin, approaching her.

Rachel smiled and held out a paper bag to Quinn. “It’s a BLT from Westville. Now you don’t have to resort to self-cannibalism.”

Quinn’s eyes lit up. “You got it for me? Doesn’t it go against your ethical vegan principles or whatever?” She took the proffered bag

Rachel grinned. “Friendship trumps ethical vegan principles,” she joked.

“So if I asked you to split this with me out of friendship, you’d say…”

“No. Friendship only goes so far,” Rachel said with a straight face.

Quinn laughed. “Well, did you get anything for yourself?”

“No,” Rachel said. “ _I_ ate lunch, so I was not in such a condition where I contemplated eating my arm.”

Quinn laughed. “Well, hang out with me for a while.”

“I was planning to.”

It was the best sandwich _ever_ , at least, in that moment. Quinn sipped water from her steel Thermos and beamed at Rachel. “You are the best,” she gushed.

Rachel chuckled. “I knew you would eventually see it my way,” she said with a grin. “It only took over a decade of knowing one another, many of those years in which we were not in contact at all for this to occur, but I knew you would see things the right way.”

Quinn rolled her eyes. “You’re such a weirdo,” she said affectionately.

“Ah, such a temperamental, capricious mistress you are. You giveth and you taketh away.”

Quinn chuckled and nudged Rachel’s knee with her own “Seriously, thanks,” she said sincerely. She put her hand on Rachel’s thigh and gently squeezed. “You’re awesome.”

Rachel’s smile was genuine. “You’re welcome.”

With Rachel being free more, Quinn started to get accustomed to seeing Rachel with more regularity. They were still double-dating with their boyfriends, but they met frequently one-on-one for concerts their boyfriends were unavailable to accompany them to, shopping excursions and meals. Quinn had to admit she became so accustomed to it, she felt a little selfish disappointment when Rachel announced she’d snagged one of her dream roles in _Oklahoma!_ because it meant she’d see Rachel less.

She was happy for her friend, but she knew she’d miss all the nights of revelry and attention Rachel showered on her and it made her a little sad that it was soon going to come to a close when Rachel started rehearsals and then performing the show live.


	5. Chapter 5

 

Rachel had some free time before rehearsals for _Oklahoma!_ started, and so it was determined that it was a good time to take a vacation for a week since it also happened to coincide with Quinn’s Spring Break

“Going on vacation with another couple is rarely a good idea,” Rachel said, when the idea was presented to her. She smiled at Quinn and Ethan. “Uh, no offense.”

Quinn smiled. “I said the same thing.”

“Come on, Rach,” Rex said. “It’ll be fine. We go on vacation all the time. And it’s Ethan and Quinn. It’ll be fun.”

“I didn’t say ‘no,’ I just said it’s rarely a good idea,” Rachel said with a laugh. “So, really? Costa Rica?”

“That’s the plan.”

Rachel had some doubts-- Ethan was a sweetheart and she genuinely considered Quinn to be a friend, but they’d only recently become reacquainted. She thought it was a little too soon to go on vacation together. But she could see she was sorely outnumbered and so she agreed to it. It seemed like the boys had already planned most of it out anyway.

She had no choice to follow along and before she even knew what hit her, she was on a plane to Costa Rica.  
\--

Quinn had just emerged from the shower after nearly two hours of swimming and sunbathing with Rachel while Rex and Ethan drank mojitos and gambled.

“Hey,” Ethan said, looking eager and happy. “I have something to tell you, but first you have to promise not to tell Rach. But if I don’t tell you, I’m going to explode!”

Quinn put her hands on her hips so abruptly that her towel slipped. She scrambled to keep it wrapped around her, but then wondered why she even bothered considering Ethan regularly saw her naked. “Oh my God, did Rex cheat on Rachel?” she asked, her mind immediately going to the worst case scenario without stopping to think about the fact Ethan looked happy. “That bastard! I’ll kill him! I’ll stomp on his balls with my highest pair of stilettos. I’ll--”

“Babes!” Ethan exclaimed, appalled. “Of _course_ he didn’t cheat on her! Why would you think I’d ask you to keep something like that a secret? Rex wants to ask Rachel to marry him!”

Quinn was squeamish. She and Rachel had many conversations about how neither of them weren’t ready for marriage-- emphatically _not_ ready.

“But Rach doesn’t _want_ to get married yet.”

“I know,” Ethan said. “So just keep it under your hat, okay? He’s going to wait until she’s a little more ready, but he bought the ring and everything.”

She really wished he hadn’t told her. In some other circumstance, she’d be _thrilled_ , but she knew Rachel truly didn’t want to get married yet and she always knew that if Rex proposed, Rachel would feel obliged to say yes. She felt really annoyed with Rex because he would know that, and yet, he was still planning on asking Rachel to marry him. Maybe not right way, but it seemed sort of presumptuous that if Rachel ever became comfortable with the idea of getting married, that she’d marry him.

It was probably a safe bet, but Quinn was still annoyed with Rex for the presumption. And now she felt like she had this secret she should really tell Rachel , but couldn’t. It wasn’t the kind of thing she wanted to keep from Rachel-- it didn’t feel good. But now she’d promised Ethan she wouldn’t tell.

“I won’t tell her,” Quinn said grudgingly. “But tell him not to pressure her or anything. She’s _seriously_ not ready and just because he’s a hundred million years old doesn’t mean _she_ needs to get married. She’s only twenty-three.”

She resented the disapproving look on his face, the one he always got any time she said something a little too bitchy.

“He’s not an ogre,” Ethan said, defending Rex. “He wouldn’t do that. And they’ve been dating a long time, it’s not unreasonable for him to want to marry her.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Quinn muttered.

Ethan grinned at her. “Don’t worry. I know you’re not ready to get married, either. So I don’t plan on asking any time soon.”

She beamed at him. “Thanks, Babes. I really appreciate how you don’t want to marry me.”

He laughed. “Well, I love that you don’t want to marry me either, Babes.”

\--

Quinn felt a little off-kilter ever since Ethan told her of Rex’s plans.

“Hey,” Rachel said, linking arms with her as they walked slightly ahead of Rex and Ethan on the way back to their hotel. “What’s wrong? You’ve been quiet.”

Quinn smiled. “Hey,” she said. “It’s nothing, just sad about our vacation ending. I’m not looking forward to going back to school.”

“Oh,” Rachel said. “Are you sure that’s it? You seem mad at E. Did he do something? I’m sure he didn’t mean to make you angry, whatever it was he did.”

“I’m not mad at Ethan,” Quinn said. She put her arm around Rachel’s waist and pulled her in. “Thanks though.”

Rachel rested her head against Quinn’s arm. “I don’t want to go back either,” she commented. “Why don’t you and I stay here? We can open up a bakery. Or maybe an Asian fusion restaurant, those seem to be really popular these days.”

Quinn was amused. “Do you know how to cook _any_ Asian food?”

“That’s what the internet is for.”

Quinn laughed. “All right,” she agreed. “We’ll leave our lives behind. Let’s start a bakery instead though.”

“It’s a deal.”

Rachel had to admit that all joking aside, she was a little disappointed that it wasn’t something that would ever happen. She actually loved her life, but it was still nice to get away from it sometimes.

“It’s a nice thought,” Quinn said wistfully.

She looked at Rachel and smiled but she felt her stomach twist for keeping something so important from Rachel. It wasn’t a _bad_ thing, she just knew that Rachel should _know_ and she was tempted to just tell Rachel except that Rachel would likely confront Rex and then Ethan would hear about it and the whole thing may just explode in her face. She knew it was more likely to be okay if she just shut her mouth, since it didn’t seem like Rex would propose _soon_ and so she decided to keep it a secret.

But every time Rex smiled at her for the rest of their vacation, she just wanted to smack him in the face for even _thinking_ about proposing to Rachel when he knew full well she wasn’t ready-- that seemed incredibly screwed up to her even though she knew Ethan was right, it wasn’t unreasonable for Rex to want to marry Rachel. After all, they _had_ been dating a long time and the more she got to know Rachel, the more she could absolutely see Rachel’s appeal, so really, she could hardly fault the guy for wanting to marry Rachel, but Quinn wanted to kill him anyway.

\--

“Did you get your period yet?” Rex asked her one day a few weeks after they got back from vacation.

Rachel rolled her eyes. He was her personal calendar. He kept better track of that than she did-- and she was on the pill.

“No,” she said. “But you know, I’ve been stressed with rehearsals, so that’s probably why. I’m sure it will come soon. It doesn’t mean anything, because I’m on the pill.”

He looked thoughtful. “The pill is only 99% effective.”

She laughed and slapped his arm. “While I love to be truly exceptional-- that is one way I emphatically do not wish to be different from the rest of the world’s population of women.”

He laughed. “I don’t think it would be such a bad thing to have a baby with you.”

“I don’t think it’d be such a bad thing either,” Rachel said. “Just not now.”

He nodded his agreement. “I know, with your new show it’s just not the right time. I’m just letting you know I’m not opposed to the idea of having a baby with you. I _want_ a baby with you when the time is ready-- even if the time isn’t necessarily ideal, I’d want it.”

She laughed. “You silly old man, don’t you know me by now? I won’t allow something as important and life-altering as having a baby fall to mere chance or accident. This is why I’m on the pill. When the time comes for us to have a baby, _I’ll_ let _you_ know.”

There were just so many things she wanted to do, wanted to see before she settled down to have a baby. She really wanted to have one eventually, but she was twenty-three and she had another twelve years before she had to worry about stuff like the probability of having a baby with Down’s Syndrome doubling after age thirty-five. She just felt like she had time to have a baby, while all the things she wanted to accomplish in her career were happening to her _now_ and she didn’t know when she’d ever have a second chance at that.

She wasn’t planning on waiting twelve years to have a baby or anything, she just wanted to get a little more established so that it wouldn’t be a problem for her to take time off when she had one-- and she planned on taking _lots_ of time off when she had a kid. She planned on showering that kid with attention that she didn’t get from her own fathers. But now wasn’t the time. And she planned on being _so_ good at what she did, that when she finally did have a baby, people would welcome her return with open arms because she was just _that_ good.

She wasn’t there yet.

“I’d love to have a baby with you,” Rex murmured. “Because you and me, we’re going to be together for a while, don’t you think?”

She chuckled. “I do think so. And I’d love to have a baby with you, too. Just not _now_ ,” she said. “So don’t even entertain that notion.”

He smiled at her. “I wouldn’t even mind it if it were now. I don’t really think it’s the right time either, but I wouldn’t mind it.”

Damn him because she was just superstitious enough to believe he jinxed her.

Despite the fact she took her birth control pill _religiously_ \-- even the placebo ones, she still somehow ended up pregnant. The only time she could remember missing a pill in the last few years was when she slept over at Quinn’s house and that was one time, _months_ ago. From the research she did online, the chances that she would end up pregnant were like, 3 in 1000. It was ridiculous.

It was just so unfair.

\--

She didn’t even contemplate for a moment keeping it. She wasn’t ready to be a mother, and it was the worst time for her to get pregnant. She snagged one of her dream roles and though she knew it was selfish, she wasn’t going to give up that role just because she’d become pregnant. It wasn’t like she was careless-- she was just incredibly fertile. She was only six weeks along, it’s not like she had any attachment at all.

He didn’t seem in any hurry to grow up, despite what he said about wanting a family, so she was caught off guard when she told him she was and he was completely jubilant.

“That’s great!” he said, beaming at her and grabbing her into a hug. “You know I want kids.”

“I’m not keeping it,” she said firmly.

His smile faded. “What are you talking about? You already made up your mind? We’re not even going to talk about it?”

His reasons for wanting to keep the baby were just as logical as her reasons for wanting to get rid of it.

“We’re already committed to each other, we both want kids eventually, and we can afford to keep the baby.”

He made sense-- of course, he made sense. But all she could think about was how she wasn’t ready for such a big commitment. She still had a lot of growing up to do. She just didn’t _want_ it.

“I’m getting rid of it,” she informed him flatly.

He looked like he wanted to scream. But instead he took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said quietly. “Look. You need to think about it. I get that. But don’t do anything hasty. Let’s just….you know, talk about this a little more after you’ve had some more time to process.”

“I don’t need time to process, I don’t want this baby.”

“Just think about it!”

She agreed to it, but only because she wanted him to just leave her alone.

She needed some air and some time away from him. As she left the apartment, he looked like he wanted to protest. He looked scared, as though there were lots of places she could get an abortion at 11pm.

“I’m just getting some air,” she told him, fighting to keep the annoyance out of her voice.

“Okay.”

She left their apartment and wandered around aimlessly for a while. Much to her dismay, he was still awake when she got back. She took an extra hot, extra long shower and then holed up in their guestroom reading a book If Rex got his way, the guestroom would be converted into a nursery. She did not want him to get his way. She knew it was selfish to think of it in such stark terms. His way. Her way. But that was exactly how she thought about it.

\--

“So,” Ethan said as he sat across from Quinn so they could eat dinner. “Can you believe Rach is pregnant?”

Quinn nearly choked on her water. “ _What?!_ ” she demanded. “Rachel’s pregnant?”

He looked horrified. “She didn’t tell you?”

“No!”

He was miserable. “I thought she would have told you.”

“Rex told you?”

Ethan looked at her witheringly. “No, Rachel told me,” he said sarcastically. “Of course Rex told me.”

“Well, are they happy about it?”

As far as Quinn knew, it didn’t seem like the sort of thing Rachel would be happy about, but then again, as far as she knew, this was the sort of thing Rachel would have confided in her about, so really, what the hell did she know? Quinn couldn’t help feeling hurt about it.

“Rachel wants to get rid of it. Rex wants her to keep it. The poor guy is pretty broken up about it. She was on birth control, but I guess she got pregnant anyway. He really wants this kid.”

Quinn was annoyed. “Poor _Rex_?!” she demanded incredulously. “What about Rachel?”

“Well, I don’t want her to kill my friend’s baby!”

“Well, I don’t want my friend to have a baby she doesn’t want! She’s not ready and it should be her choice!”

“So he doesn’t have a say in this at all? She doesn’t want it, so he can’t have a kid?”

“That’s exactly how it should be! Is he pushing the baby out through _his_ vagina?”

Ethan shook his head. “So, if this were us, you wouldn’t give me a say in it either?”

“No,” Quinn said. “I wouldn’t.”

\--

She texted Rachel once she calmed down.

_Can we meet for dinner tomorrow? Just me and you_

Rachel’s response came a couple hours later.

_Okay_

\--

Rachel looked a little gaunt. She was pale and she had dark circles under her eyes, but she smiled when she saw Quinn.

“Hey stranger,” she said happily.

Quinn smiled back, but she swallowed hard as she took in Rachel’s appearance. “You look like crap, stranger,” she said bluntly, but her voice was soft, communicating her genuine concern.

“I’ve been tired, rehearsals have been crazy,” Rachel said dismissively with a soft laugh. “I’ll catch up on sleep this weekend.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said.”You do that.”

\--

They were seated, ordered their meals and were placidly eating and making idle conversation for a while until Quinn couldn’t take it anymore.

“Were you going to tell me you’re pregnant?”

In shock, Rachel stabbed herself in the mouth with her fork and immediately made a face and rolled her eyes self-deprecatingly. She set the fork down on the table.

“I guess Rex must have told Ethan,” she said quietly. “We agreed to keep this between the two of us.” She paused. “He is such a girl.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I guess I assumed your stance on the matter,” Rachel said calmly. “You had a baby in high school instead of taking a route that would have been easier in some respects. I just assumed my decision would be contrary to your convictions and I didn’t want to have a discussion.”

She’d wanted to tell _someone_ , and really, the only person she had in her life these days whom she could call a good friend was Quinn. But Quinn had a baby in high school when it would have been easier to cover it up with an abortion. Quinn didn’t take the easy or most convenient way out-- Quinn stuck to her convictions, and though Rachel admired that (had always admired that), she did not want a discussion now. She didn’t want to be talked out of anything. This decision wasn’t _easy_ for her, but this is what she wanted to do.

“I can’t believe you just assumed I wouldn’t be on your side,” Quinn said, wounded by the implication

“Sorry,” Rachel said quietly. “I just…I know what I want, but I’ve been fighting with Rex about it and I didn’t want to fight with anyone else.”

“How long have you known?”

Rachel smiled wryly. “Two weeks,” she said softly. “I really wish I could change my mind and I’ve been waking up every day feeling terrible because I really want to wake up wanting to keep this baby. But I don’t.”

She really did feel awful that she didn’t want this baby, because really, she wanted one eventually, but it was such horrible timing. And she unreasonably blamed Rex for it, despite the fact that she was the one on the pill.

“So you’re going to have an abortion?”

Rachel nodded. “Yes. I don’t want to wait much longer. I don’t want to hurt Rex, but he’s not going to talk me out of it.”

“I’ll take you,” Quinn said softly. “I know Rex would probably do it, but let’s not make him, okay?”

Rachel nodded and she gave Quinn a small smile. “Thanks,” she said.

But Rachel felt a churning in her stomach. She didn’t want to lose Rex, which was part of the reason she’d put off handling the situation.

She remembered what Rex told her that morning before she left for rehearsal-- _“Rachel, if you get rid of this baby, we’re done.”_

“Rach?”

“Yes?”

“Just so you know,” Quinn said quietly. “I wouldn’t have tried to talk you out of it. You’re my friend.”

“I get that now,” Rachel said softly.

“Good,” Quinn said.

It’d really hurt her feelings to hear that Rachel thought she would have ever tried to talk Rachel out of it. She’d assumed Rachel knew her better than that.

\--

Rachel had an appointment with her doctor ready to go, but she still had Rex pleading with her to change her mind. Life at home was unbearable

And then during rehearsal one afternoon, she felt _terrible_ \-- nauseous and cramping and she knew that something was _really_ wrong. It hurt so much, she was doubled over and could barely move. But even as she was transported to the ER, she thought to herself how nice it was of fate to do the hard part for her.

\--

She was at the hospital for nearly eight hours before she went home. Rex was gentle with her as he led her into their apartment. She collapsed into their bed and curled up.

“Rach, baby--”

“Go away,” she said quietly. “I just want to be left alone for a while.”

She didn’t have any regret or anything, but she was so overwhelmed all she wanted to do was cry-- that was normal, apparently since her hormones were still out of wack. But all she wanted to do was cry, and she really didn’t think she had any reason to cry-- it’s not like she wanted this baby. But once the tears came, she couldn’t make herself stop. She wanted to stop, but she couldn’t. She just felt awful and miserable.

“It’s going to be okay, baby,” Rex whispered. “I guess you were more attached than you thought.”

But she wasn’t. At all. And he just didn’t _get_ it.

She wished she could stop crying so he’d realize how genuinely relieved she was, but she just couldn’t _stop_ crying and she was completely overwhelmed.

“Go away,” she cried. “Just go away.”

\--

Quinn was in the middle of class when Ethan called her. She knew it had to be important if he was calling her in the middle of the day when he knew full well that she had class, so she excused herself and left the classroom.

“Is everything okay?”

“Rach lost the baby two days ago,” Ethan said softly. “Rex just called to tell me. So let’s go over to their place today, okay? Rex said she hasn’t been out of bed in two days, so I’m going to check on her. Come with me?”

Quinn released a soft gasp. Rachel had an appointment for an abortion in two days. She was supposed to accompany Rachel to her appointment. “Is she okay?”

“She’s okay,” he assured. “But let’s go over anyway and bring them dinner. Okay? I want to make sure she’s all right.”

“Okay,” Quinn agreed.

\--

Rachel was still curled up in bed when she heard the door open and felt the bed dip under someone’s weight. She shut her eyes even tighter and curled up. She knew it wasn’t Rex-- he had an entirely different feel when he entered the room.

“Rach,” Quinn said softly. The blonde reached out and petted Rachel’s hair. “Come on, sit up.”

“I don’t want to,” Rachel muttered sullenly, rolling away from Quinn. She had a few days off from work to deal with this and she planned to just spend it in bed. She didn’t want to think about what would happen with Rex, she didn’t want to think about the questions awaiting her when she went back to rehearsal and she didn’t want to make nice with _anyone_ , even Quinn.

“You haven’t been out of bed in two days.”

“That’s ridiculous. It’s not as though I peed the bed. I’ve been out of this bed and even if I chose to stay in here for the rest of my life, I think that is my prerogative.”

“Come on, Rach,” Quinn said, stroking Rachel’s hair. “Don’t be a jerk,” she said gently. “C’mere, stranger,” she said, pulling Rachel closer so that she cradled Rachel’s head in her lap.

In spite of herself Rachel snuggled closer to Quinn, and wrapped her arms around Quinn’s waist. “Sorry, stranger,” she said quietly.

“It’s okay,” Quinn said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Rachel sighed. She still had her eyes squeezed shut.

“So confining yourself to your bed is the new definition of fine?”

Rachel laughed softly. “I just need a little time to myself.”  
  
Quinn stroked Rachel’s hair. “I get that. But at least eat something, okay? I got you some of that vegan spinach manicotti that you like.”

“Thanks,” Rachel said. The thought of food held no appeal to her. “Maybe later,” she said.

They sat in silence for a while as Rachel continued to rest her head in Quinn’s lap. Quinn lightly massaged Rachel’s scalp. It felt comforting and Rachel felt herself relax and become drowsy when she heard Ethan and Rex’s voices in the living room. Just a few days before she had the miscarriage, Ethan called her out of the blue and quietly stated he thought she and Rex would be great parents, and that ultimately, it was up to her, but he just wanted her to know that he thought getting rid of the baby would be a mistake.

Now he was here? It was clear where Ethan’s loyalties were, and Quinn was his girlfriend-- it was fair to assume that Quinn stood with Ethan and Rex.

Rachel sat up quickly and pulled away.

“Rach?” Quinn asked in confusion. “Are you okay? Do you feel sick?”

“So, you came here with your boyfriend?” Rachel asked. “Because Rex told you guys to? What, so you and Ethan are on Rex’s side? It’s my fault I lost this baby? I did it on purpose?” She knew that was exactly how Rex felt, even if he didn’t voice it. It was probably how Ethan and Quinn felt too. “Are you here to tell me how awful I am because I never wanted that baby?”

Quinn was bewildered at the sudden burst irrationality that just emerged from nowhere. “Where is this coming from?”

“You’re only here because your boyfriend made you come,” Rachel said bitterly. “Because Ethan and Rex are friends.” Rachel crossed her arms. “Well, you aren’t obliged to be here. Why don’t you just go comfort Rex because his selfish girlfriend lost their baby? I know you’d rather comfort him than be here with me. It’s not like you were actually my friend. We both know the only reason we hung out is because Rex and Ethan wanted us to be friends. But we aren’t really friends.”

“Where is this coming from?” Quinn asked, stung.

Rachel wasn’t sure either.

“Just leave me alone,” Rachel said wearily. “Just go.”

“Rachel,” Quinn said softly. “Come on, get up. We’ll go into the living room and we’ll eat--”

“I don’t want anything from any of you,” Rachel said. “All I want is for you guys to leave me alone.”

“Rach, don’t be like this. Come on.”

“Just go.”

“Rach--”

“Go.”

“Rachel--”

“I don’t want to talk to you. So go. We _aren’t_ friends, so I don’t even know why you’re here, except that your boyfriend obviously dragged you here. Our _boyfriends_ are friends, not us. And since Rex will undoubtedly break up with me any day now, there’s no need for us to continue the charade of being friends. So just go. Just _go_ because we aren’t friends.”

“That’s not true, Rachel.”

“Yes, it is, so go.”

Quinn sighed deeply. She opened her mouth to speak, wanting to refute everything Rachel just said and castigate Rachel for her vicious tone, but she stopped herself. Rachel was clearly irrational at the moment and couldn’t hear anything she had to say. So she gave Rachel one last look and left.

\--

“I can’t believe she said that stuff to me,” Quinn said quietly to Ethan that night as they lay in her bed.

“Don’t read too much into it, Babes,” Ethan said softly. “Her hormones are completely screwed up right now-- she couldn’t have meant it. It was physiological, you know? It’ll blow over.”

“But what if she did mean it?”

“Then don’t you think that’s something you should know?”

“I guess,” Quinn said softly, but the thought Rachel actually meant all that stuff really hurt.

Hearing Rachel say all that, her voice calmly, lifelessly spiteful truly stung. She genuinely thought they were friends, and if Rachel actually felt they were only friends because their boyfriends were friends….well, then, Rachel was a better actress than Quinn could have ever dreamed because that wasn’t her impression at all. She’d genuinely believed that they actually became friends and that their friendship was completely separate from Rex and Ethan’s and Quinn had been under the impression Rachel felt the same way.

\--

Rachel stewed in her own anger and frustration for the rest of the weekend, but she felt well enough by Monday morning to paint a smile to her face and stroll into rehearsal like nothing happened. She threw herself into work and tried to forget anything happened and just moved on.

It was obviously easier to do at work than at home.

She kept up with appearances until she got home to yet another argument with Rex. They were arguing almost nightly.

He was patient with her, but there was only so much of him that she could take. He was saying all the right things-- “we can try again when you’re ready” and “it’s okay, it’s not your fault” but she could see how much he resented her for being relieved she wasn’t pregnant anymore and how much it pained him that she’d planned to terminate the pregnancy before she had the miscarriage. She really resented him for being resentful.

They tried to soldier through it for a month, but ultimately, she knew it was over, he knew it was over and they quietly concluded it was best that she move out. Other couples may have been able to survive it, but they just couldn’t.

\--

Quinn waited for a month for Rachel to call and apologize-- after all, she wasn’t the asshole this time, so why should she have to run after Rachel? She thought for sure Rachel would call, but she didn’t and every day that passed made Quinn feel a little more disheartened.

She was in class one day when Ethan texted her.

 _They broke up. You should call her. She’s moving out_.

Quinn swallowed hard. He didn’t have to give any identifying information. She knew who he meant by “they.” Over the last four weeks Rex and Rachel had become an addition to their relationship, something they talked over relentlessly as though the survival of their relationship was dependent on the survival of Rex and Rachel’s.

She waited anxiously throughout class and then called Rachel. The brunette picked up immediately

“I’m so sorry for everything I said,” Rachel burst out, without even giving Quinn a chance to utter a greeting. “I didn’t mean any of it! I was hormonal and hateful and I am so so _so_ apologetic. I owe you an infinite supply of my famous and incredibly delicious ‘I’m sorry’ cookies because I really am _so_ sorry. And I would have called you sooner, but I was sure you were cross with me, and probably not at all inclined to forgive me and I didn’t want to bother you and then all this time went by and I really wanted to apologize, but I was being horrible to everyone and I’m just _so_ sorry, Quinn! I promise you that I--”

Quinn chuckled softly. “Rachel,” she murmured. “I think you might pass out from lack of oxygen. Shut up for a while,” she said fondly. “It’s okay. I accept your apology.”

“Just like that?” Rachel said anxiously. “Because I feel a certain amount of groveling should be mandatory and I was _such_ a jerk.”

“You were,” Quinn agreed. “But it’s okay. It was a bad time for you.” She hesitated. “Are you okay now? How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Rachel said. “How are you? What have you been up to?”

“I’m good,” Quinn said. “It’s the same thing for me-- school, you know?” She was hesitant again. “I know you and Rex broke up,” she said quietly. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Rachel repeated, but this time her voice wavered slightly.

“You’re moving out?”

“Yes,” Rachel said softly. She paused. “Can we not talk about this? I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Okay,” Quinn acquiesced.

“I should actually go,” Rachel said quietly. “Uh, unless there was something you needed to talk about?”

“No,” Quinn said. “Can we get together tonight for dinner?” she asked. Rachel sounded okay but Quinn was worried anyway.

“Sure,” Rachel said. “Your choice.”

“Okay,” Quinn said, suppressing the urge to protest because she really wanted Rachel to choose so that Quinn could be certain Rachel would enjoy the meal, but Rachel was famously indecisive when it came to what restaurant to choose because she didn’t want to be insensitive to anyone’s dietary preferences. “I’ll text you, okay?”

She knew Rachel well enough now that she knew most of Rachel’s favorite restaurants anyway.

“Okay. Thanks. See you tonight.”

“See you tonight,” Quinn echoed.

\--

As Rachel waited for Quinn to show up for dinner, she wondered why she just didn’t call Quinn and apologize. She knew she was in the wrong, and she should have just said, ‘I was a jerk because I was completely hormonal and in abject physical discomfort and I took it out on you because I was mad at Rex and you were a more convenient target than him.’ But she didn’t. She didn’t think she would have ever called Quinn-- she’d just assumed their friendship was over. So it’d been such a relief when Quinn did call and it made it so much easier to just apologize.

“Hey, stranger,” Quinn greeted. “It’s been a while.”

Rachel looked up at her. “Hello, stranger,” she said softly. She stood up to give Quinn a quick hug, but it went on longer than she intended and they stood there for a few moments embracing one another tightly.

“You okay?” Quinn asked softly, once they pulled apart because Rachel really did not look so good.

Rachel gave her a faint smile. “I’m just tired.”

Quinn gave Rachel a small smile. “Okay,” she said, choosing not to push.

They sat down and ordered their food and caught each other up on the past month of their lives.

They were sharing a dessert when Quinn finally decided to stop skirting the issue.

“Are you okay?” Quinn asked gently. “I mean, really. Are you okay? Because, Rach, you really don’t look so good. Where are you staying? Are you guys even talking?”

“I’m fine,” Rachel said softly. “Really. I’m fine. Rex and I are still talking-- he’s a good guy, Quinn. We’re trying to make this as easy as possible. I still have to move my stuff out, but I haven’t found a new place. I’ve been staying at a hotel and it’s okay. I only moved out a few days ago. It hasn’t really sunk in yet, you know? In a ‘I still make coffee for two’ sort of way.”

“You’re staying in a hotel?”

Rachel shrugged. “We tried to make it work,” she said simply. “But it didn’t. We thought I could just stay there until I found a new place, but it became untenable. He and I both deserve better than that.”

“Okay,” Quinn said quietly. “But a hotel?”

“It takes time to find an apartment, and I really haven’t had time,” Rachel said defensively. “It’s only been a few days.”

“Why don’t you stay with me? My couch can be yours.”

Rachel smiled. “Thank you,” she said warmly. “But I don’t think that’s a good idea. What about Ethan? He’s basically Rex’s best friend. It would be very uncomfortable for him and consequently for the rest of us.”

“He doesn’t live there, so he’ll just need to live with it.”

“I don’t want to put any more undue stress on your relationship.”

“You’re not,” Quinn said. “Just stay with me until you find a new place. That way we can just pick up all your stuff from Rex’s. We’ll just leave the boxes in the living room.”

It was tempting to make a clean break from Rex’s. As it was, Rachel still had most of her stuff, clothing included, at Rex’s. She knew he wouldn’t be petty and burn or destroy anything-- the break-up was amicable as it could be, all things considered. But she just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. However, she didn’t want to bring Quinn into the middle of it, considering Quinn would undoubtedly still see Rex socially through Ethan.

“Thanks, but I really shouldn’t. I don’t want to put you in the middle.”

“It’ll be okay, Rach. Let’s get your stuff this weekend, okay? Move in with me for a while, I think it’d be nice to have someone around. It can be lonely living alone. Keep me company.”

Rachel took a deep contemplative breath and chewed on lower lip before she finally gave Quinn a small smile. “Okay.”


	6. Chapter 6

 

The first thing Quinn observed when she walked into the apartment Rachel used to share with Rex were a few pairs of Rachel and Rex’s shoes, by the door, slightly askew. Rachel made a little groan of fond exasperation and purely out of habit, crouched down to adjust the shoes so that they were all in a straight line.

“I’ve told him a million times about this,” Rachel said with a fond smile.

“I don’t think that matters right now, Rach,” Quinn said softly.

Rachel’s smile dimmed. “Right.”

Rex was mercifully absent from the apartment that day, giving Rachel and Quinn a respectful distance for Rachel to move everything out.

\--

As they walked through the apartment, Rachel seemed unable to stop herself from staring at the pictures of her and Rex that were on the walls. Those were captured moments of happier times, and Rachel wistfully wondered if she could trade places with the girl in the pictures.

She didn’t move into this apartment with very much, so she wasn’t leaving with much either-- the rest of her clothes, the rest of her toiletries, some books, CDs and other personal effects. She only took things that were unambiguously hers. She and Quinn gathered them up and boxed them. She didn’t have much, but it was still odd to see what the apartment looked like with some of her personal touches removed, with all of her musicals removed from their DVD shelf, etc.

She’d bought items to decorate the apartment over the years, and things like kitchen utensils, but she didn’t want to be petty and take them. She was torn because she wanted to leave them for Rex, but at the same time, she wondered if he wanted everything of hers erased from the apartment. She decided she was going to leave that for him to decide for himself. She left the pictures of herself and the pictures of the two of them on the walls and around the rest of the apartment. He could get rid of those, too, if that was what he wanted.

She just got the things that were unquestionably her own and left.

It didn’t take much or that long and they packed up fifteen boxes, several garment bags and a couple of duffel bags and transported everything in Ethan’s car to Quinn’s apartment in three trips.

She didn’t want their relationship to end-- it was devastating that it ended.

He was her best friend and her boyfriend rolled into one. His family was her family. She didn’t _have_ anyone else in the _world_. But she just didn’t think their relationship could survive what happened-- it wasn’t such a big deal to her, she’d lost a baby and while it’d been pretty traumatic, she’d made up her mind on what to do.

But it’d been _devastating_ for him and she just knew they could never get over how wildly they differed on how they felt about it. She was relieved-- and he was horrified by her relief.

She knew it was better that they split up instead of dragging it out-- they’d tried and failed to make it work. She knew it was better this way, but she didn’t understand why it had to hurt so much. If it was better this way, why did it have to hurt?

\--

It was strange, but Quinn didn’t notice Rachel’s presence in her apartment much. Rachel was awake and gone before Quinn got up in the mornings and Rachel came home after Quinn did. They often shared a quick dinner together and watched TV together mostly in silence on what amounted to Rachel’s bed (Quinn’s sofa) until Quinn would excuse herself to her bedroom to study and to give Rachel some space.

Quinn was so angry with Ethan because when he came over while Rachel was there, he was nice and polite, but he was clearly uncomfortable which made Rachel uncomfortable. Quinn knew he was in a difficult position, but she thought he was being kind of a dick and she had to admit it diminished her opinion of him a little.

It got to the point where she thought it was best that he just didn’t come over. When she met with him, it was always outside of her apartment.

She had to admit that Rachel just kind of took precedence for a while.

\--

It was two weeks into their shared living arrangement and Quinn was sitting on the couch with her head pressed into that space between Rachel’s neck and shoulder.

“Your hair tickles,” Rachel complained good-naturedly.

Quinn chuckled and began rubbing her head deeper into Rachel’s neck.

Rachel squealed and squirmed away, rubbing her neck and laughing. “Quinn! What were you trying to do? Exfoliate my skin with your hair?”

Quinn wrinkled her nose in disdain. “You’re so gross.”

“I know.”

Quinn laughed and pulled Rachel close. Rachel gave her a warm smile and put her arm around the blonde’s shoulder and pulled her in so they could resume their previous positions.

“Your hair still tickles.”

“You love it.”

They both laughed softly and Rachel resumed channel surfing. She paused at a particular station and her eyes welled with tears.

“This is one of Rex’s movies,” Rachel said softly.

Quinn peeked at Rachel and gently plucked the remote out of Rachel’s hands. “My remote,” she said, flipping the channel upward, not caring what the hell it was as long as it wasn’t one of Rex’s movies. It was an informercial. She gently wiped at Rachel’s eyes. “Aw, Rachel,” she said softly, lifting up her head to rest against the back of her couch. She brushed Rachel’s bangs away. “Over a guy?” she teased gently, hoping she could make Rachel laugh.

It worked, because Rachel’s shoulders shook with laughter and Rachel turned to give her a wry grin. Rachel wiped at her eyes.

“Yes,” she said rolling her eyes self-deprecatingly. She slapped Quinn’s thigh. “Like you never cried over a guy?”

“No, never,” Quinn joked. She smiled. “Many guys have cried over me.”

Rachel snorted. “Now _that_ I believe,” she said. She reached out to cup Quinn’s cheek and smiled warmly.”You’re a heartbreaker,” she sang. “Dream maker, love taker, don’t you mess around with me no no no!”

Quinn rolled her eyes. “Okay, Pat Benatar.”

Rachel laughed. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

“I know you couldn’t. It’s okay though, I accept your lack of self-control when it comes to breaking out into songs like you’re a small woodland creature.”

“As long as you don’t say I ‘m a gnome.”

Quinn laughed. “You’re lucky you’re little and cute, or else I would.”

Rachel looked pleased. “You think I’m cute?”

“ _Little_ and cute,” Quinn emphasized.

Rachel pouted. “Like a toddler?”

Quinn paused as she ruminated over it. “More like a baby bunny.”

Rachel’s mouth dropped in outage. “Hey!”

Quinn laughed. “What? You like bunnies. You said they were cute.”

“I do like bunnies and I do think they’re cute, but I don’t want to be likened to one.”

“Puppy?”

“Quinn!” Rachel exclaimed with a laugh. “No!”

“Kitten?”

“Quinn!”

“Baby lion? Those things can still tear your heart out.”

“No!” Rachel exclaimed, laughing. “Quinn!”

Quinn smiled at Rachel and curled up, resting her head in Rachel’s lap. “I’m just trying to make you laugh, Rach.”

Rachel ran one of her hands through Quinn’s hair. “I know,” she said quietly. “And thank you. But I’m okay.”

“Are you?” Quinn asked quietly. “Because I honestly can’t tell.”

“I’m fine,” Rachel said softly. “Really.” She cleared her throat. “You know, I found a place today. The unit won’t be available for another week though. Is that okay?”

“Did you sign a lease?”

“Not yet.”

Quinn wished her apartment were bigger or had another room because she genuinely liked having Rachel around. Living alone had its perks, but sometimes it got lonely, even though before Rachel moved in, Ethan stayed over a minimum of a couple nights a week. It was just sort of nice having Rachel around.

“Do you like it? I mean, is it nice?”

“Sure it’s nice. I like it.”

“You really haven’t been looking for very long.”

“I know, but I can’t stay on your couch in perpetuity. And it’s not a permanent place. I could see myself staying there for a year or two. I’m sure you want your home back.”

“I haven’t minded.”

“My stuff is everywhere. I completely took over your living room.”

“I haven’t minded.”

“I just feel like I should give you your space back. It’s been _great_ living with you,” Rachel said fervently. “I don’t know what I would have done without you these past few weeks. But you _need_ your space back.”

“It’s been pretty nice having you around, too,” Quinn said softly. “Why don’t you hold off on moving out until you find a place you really like? It’s worked for us so far, so why change it? Just take your time and find a place you really want.”

“You have to let me pay half the rent then, while I stay here.”

“But--”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “Yes, we’ll pro-rate it per your desire, although I don’t see why I just can’t pay half.”

“Because you haven’t been here a month”

“Well, I probably will be now, and those are my terms.”

Quinn sighed. “Fine. So you’ll stay?”  
  
Rachel smiled. “Yes.” She ran her finger along Quinn’s eyebrow, smiling when Quinn smiled. “Thanks,” she said softly.

“You’re welcome.”

“Are you falling asleep on me?”

“No,” Quinn muttered. “I’m just resting my eyes. Now be quiet, you’re talking through the best part.”

“This is an infomercial.”

“I know.”

“It’s from the Smart Mop. You already have one.”

“That’s how I know it’s the best part.”

\--

Quinn did, in fact, fall asleep in Rachel’s lap. Rachel woke up the next morning with a sore back and numb legs, but she didn’t mind it much.

“Quinn,” Rachel whispered, gently lifting Quinn up. “I have to go.”

Quinn groaned and wrapped her arms around Rachel’s waist. “Don’t move. I’m comfortable.”

Rachel laughed softly. “Come on,” she said, getting up and pulling Quinn into a standing position.

“You’re a terrible woman,” Quinn murmured as Rachel took Quinn by the hand and led the blonde to her bedroom. “I was so comfortable. I was having a dream that I was swimming with mermaids.”

Rachel suppressed the desire to laugh because Quinn was sleepily vulnerable and not so well-defended the way the blonde was most of the time. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. She opened the door to Quinn’s bedroom and pushed her onto the bed.

Quinn immediately curled up and sighed in contentment.

Rachel smiled down at her and leaned down. “I’m going to shower and I have to go,” she said softly. She brushed a kiss against Quinn’s cheek. “What time do you need to get up? I’ll set your alarm.”

“9,” Quinn murmured.

“Okay,” Rachel said, setting it. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said softly, sighing as she burrowed deeper into bed. “See you at home.”

\--  
  
Another two weeks passed and Rachel finally did find an apartment she really liked and that she was excited about moving into.

It was already available and Rachel moved in so quickly that it was like she was never even living with Quinn in the first place.

The first couple weeks Rachel moved out, Quinn still bought too much food at the grocery store, stillcookede too much food and continued to buy vegan alternatives. It was astonishing to see how quickly she’d become accustomed to Rachel’s presence and adjusted accordingly and how long it took to readjust once Rachel was gone.

Ethan was nice about Rachel, but he made a few mean-spirited comments-- generally after spending time with Rex, but it bothered Quinn anyway.  
  
“I can’t believe she’s _already_ dating someone,” Ethan complained as they passed a newsstand which had a magazine with a picture of Rachel in the arms of one of her costars. “Rex is still pretty messed up about it. Maybe she _is_ a cold fish.”

“She’s not dating that guy, they’re friends,” Quinn said, annoyed. There were rumors Rachel was dating that guy, but Rachel said they were wildly untrue and Quinn believed her. They’d lived together for a little over a month and Rachel had _mourned_ that break-up with Rex. It was insulting to imply or say otherwise. Quinn felt the need to defend her friend. “And even if she were, that doesn’t make her a cold fish. What kind of crap is he saying about her that you’d say that?”

“He’s not saying anything negative about her,” Ethan said. “He adores her. _She_ dumped him.”

“Well, from what Rachel says it was mutual.”

“Well, she made it pretty impossible to get through it. Rex said she didn’t _want_ to get through it. What was he supposed to do?”

“How about not be a dick?”

“Whatever.”

She knew her boyfriend’s loyalties were to Rex, but she also thought it should mean something to him that Rachel was her friend. Ethan was generally nice, but he made comments about how it was a relief that Rachel had found her own place, and wondered why she just couldn’t have made it work with Rex. Since the break-up, Ethan was spending a lot of time with Rex the way she’d spent a lot of time with Rachel. There were lots of nights of Ethan drunk-dialing her and it bugged the shit out of her because sloppy drunks who drunk-dialed _really_ bothered her.

Things started bubbling up to the surface-- they started to bicker, about Rex, about Rachel, about the drinking, about the lack of time they had for one another and a myriad of other things between them.

She loved him but she was seeing him in a whole new light that wasn’t particularly flattering.

It went on for another four months, the two of them trying whole-heartedly and then half-heartedly and then finally barely at all to make things work. After too many silent dinners, tense conversations, nasty arguments and the ensuing awkward reconciliations, and replacing intimacy with just sex, Quinn finally decided it was over. Ethan agreed.

It was honestly kind of a relief.

Rachel came over the day after Quinn broke up with Ethan, armed with Quinn’s favorite pizza, DVDs, ice cream (for Quinn), vegan cookies (for her), jellybeans and a bottle of vodka.

“Sometimes,” Rachel said with a shrug. “The only thing that can make a day better is vodka.”

Quinn laughed. “Yeah.”

She didn’t want to be like her mother, blunting and covering all of life’s painful edges with alcohol, but she had to admit, the occasion kind of called for it.

“I’m going to make you a dirty martini, extra dirty the way you like it,” Rachel said, once she settled everything onto the coffee table. “I’ll be right back,” she said, gently squeezing Quinn’s knee and grabbing the bottle of vodka as she headed toward the kitchen. “Do you want me to get you anything while I’m there?”

“I’m fine,” Quinn called out. And she was. She took a bite of a slice of pizza and sighed.

Rachel came back with two dirty martinis and some napkins and took a seat next to Quinn. She grabbed a slice of pizza and bit into it.

Quinn raised her eyebrows. “You’re vegan. Is this soy?” she demanded. It didn’t _taste_ like soy.

Rachel laughed. “I’m compromising my principles for friendship.”

Quinn was perversely pleased by this. “Oh,” she said with a grin. “Good.”

They watched a few movies and then spent the night giggling as they tried to hurl jellybeans into one another’s mouths.

“I’ve missed this couch,” Rachel commented, patting the cushion.

Quinn laughed. “The couch misses you, too, stranger.”

Rachel smiled and brushed some of Quinn’s hair behind her shoulder. “I’ve missed you, stranger,” she admitted. “I’ve never lived alone before. I’ve always lived with roommates or Rex. And then, you know, you.”

Quinn chuckled. “I’ve missed you too,” she confessed. “It was nice having you around.”

Rachel grinned crookedly. “Of course it was, I’m fabulous.”

Quinn rolled her eyes. “Now I want you to leave.”

Rachel shrugged and moved to get up. “If you insist!” she said with a laugh.

“No!” Quinn exclaimed with a giggle. She raised herself a little bit so she could wrap her arms around Rachel. She pulled the brunette down and they stumbled back into the couch, Rachel falling into her lap.

“Brute,” Rachel teased.

Quinn giggled. “Shut up,” she said softly.

Rachel laughed and moved out of Quinn’s lap, slipping in to sit beside the blonde, their thights touching. “You shut up,” she said.

“No, you,” Quinn said resting her head on Rachel’s shoulder as they watched _Love Actually_.

“No, you.”

They both giggled.

“Quinn?”

“Yeah?”

“So’s your face.”

Quinn laughed softly. “Oh, shut up,” she said fondly.

\--

Quinn couldn’t believe only a year passed since she reconnected with Rachel-- so much happened for both of them, _between_ both of them, that it felt like a century.

“Why are we going to this party when neither of us wants to go?” Rachel asked.

“I don’t know,” Quinn admitted.

Except that Hannah asked and for whatever reason, it was insanely difficult to say no to that girl.

“During my sophomore year, I went with her to a Halloween party and I borrowed _her_ Hooters girl outfit. She told everyone my name is Roberta and that I wasn’t a Hooters girl, but the Spirit of Irony. Everyone thought it was _so_ clever and I still have people come up to me who think my name is Roberta.”

Quinn laughed so hard, she bent over. “That is hilarious.”

“It’s not! I was so mad at her, I wanted to cry. I do _not_ look like a Roberta.”

Quinn laughed. “No,” she agreed. “You don’t.”

“And my breasts aren’t _that_ small!” Rachel exclaimed. She touched them and looked down at them uncertainly. “Are they?”

Quinn looked away, blushing. “They’re nice,” she muttered.

“You aren’t even looking!”

“I looked!”

“How can you be looking when I’m standing here, and you’re looking waaaaaay over there?” Rachel said, pointing to her left where Quinn had been gazing.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not looking waaaaaaaay over there. I’m looking right at them!”

“ _Now_ you are, but you weren’t before.”

“You’re _insane_.”

“Yes, but you already knew this about me. In any case, my breasts aren’t _that_ small are they?”

Rachel looked so self-conscious that Quinn finally sighed and really took a good look. Her cheeks turned bright pink. She felt _so_ embarrassed and she really had no idea why. She felt like a ten year old boy. But she was twenty-four years old.

“They’re not too small at all. They’re perfect,” Quinn said softly.

She didn’t want to say “they’re not small,” because they were small-- it’s not like Rachel was Dolly fucking Parton or anything, but they were perfect. At least, Quinn thought so.

Rachel beamed at her and she threw herself at Quinn, wrapping her arms around Quinn’s neck and pressing those perfect breasts into Quinn. “Thank you!” she exclaimed with a bright smile.

Quinn patted Rachel on the back. “Sure thing, you psycho.”

Rachel grinned and extricated herself. “Yours are perfect, too,” she declared. She bounced out of the room to the bathroom to finish getting ready.

Rachel Berry was a crazy person, but Quinn Fabray really didn’t care.

\--

At Hannah’s Halloween party, Quinn glanced across the room at Rachel who gave her a panicked, pained look in return.

Dressed as Beatrice Kiddo from the _Kill Bill_ movies, Quinn wished she had a real sword to mow down the people who kept dragging Rachel around like she was a prop or something. They’d become separated early on in the evening and Quinn felt terrible because she promised Rachel they’d stick together, but Rachel was dragged off by some girls from Julliard who’d heard about Rachel’s break-up with Rex and wanted the real dirt and it was a conversation Quinn clearly wasn’t invited to, and so she’d let that go. It seemed liked maybe Rachel wanted to talk to those girls anyway, even though Quinn doubted Rachel wanted to discuss Rex, since Rachel never wanted to discuss Rex.

Then she got hauled into conversations with classmates she couldn’t break away from and every time she looked for Rachel, the brunette’s smile was becoming increasingly forced.

Finally, Quinn watched as Rachel excused herself from conversation and rush into the bathroom. Quinn followed after her but found the door was locked.

Quinn knocked on the door. “Rach? It’s Quinn. Open up and let me in.”

It took a few moments but Rachel finally opened the door and allowed Quinn entry. Rachel was in tears and Quinn felt _terrible_. She rushed inside, shut the door and locked it.

“Are you okay?” Quinn asked, alarmed. She wiped at Rachel’s eyes before Rachel’s eye makeup could run and smear.

Rachel sniffled. “I’m okay,” she said. “I’m just being dumb.”

“Why are you crying?” Quinn asked softly.

Rachel sucked in a few deep breaths. “There’s just so many people,” she said. She was overwhelmed by how many people there were. “And people keep asking me about Rex,” she explained, her eyes welling up just because she uttered his name. “I miss him _so_ much.”

Quinn rubbed Rachel’s back. “I know,” she said softly.

Rachel sniffled. “You must miss Ethan.”

“I do,” Quinn acknowledged. She’d spent many nights crying over him and wondering how their relationship could have ended. It ended so anti-climatically, it still felt so unfinished. She did miss him, even though she thought it was for the best, and she tried not to think about it.

“’I think I made a mistake,” Rachel said, voice quivering. “I should have just had the baby.”

“Rachel, you had a miscarriage,” Quinn said gently. “You had no control over that.”

“I know,” Rachel said. “But I kept wishing the baby would go away and it finally did. I think I made it happen with the power of my mind. I’m a little psychic, you know, and I think I telepathically communicated with the baby.”

She’d been so grateful for it, even though it’d been painful and terrifying. But now that she had some distance from it, she felt so guilty for wishing the problem would go away-- for even thinking it _was_ a problem. And now she wondered if maybe it would’ve been better if she’d just submitted to Rex, because really, he was sort of right-- they could afford to be parents and he wasn’t getting any younger. She really was selfish, just like he said, for expecting him to put off parenthood when he was already in his 40’s.

“Rachel,” Quinn said, biting back a little bark of laughter because of _course_ Rachel Berry would think she’d have the power to control that sort of thing with her mind. “You had no control over it,” she repeated. “If people had control over that sort of thing, I wouldn’t have had a baby either. You have no idea how much I wanted it to go away, how much I _prayed_ for it.”

“You did?” Rachel asked quietly.

“Yes,” Quinn assured. “And while I would spoil any baby of yours rotten, you told me _way_ before you got pregnant that you weren’t ready to get married or have a baby. I’m glad you didn’t have one before you were ready.”

“I know,” Rachel said softly. “But maybe I should have just done it anyway.”

“Rachel, are you some chick from the 1950s like Kate Winslet in _Revolutionary Road_ or something and I’m just not aware of it?”

Rachel laughed a little. “No. But--”

“But nothing, dipstick,” Quinn said, tweaking Rachel’s nose, and ignoring the squeak of protest. “You weren’t ready.”

Rachel looked disheartened. Her shoulders slumped. “I know. But I miss him.”

Quinn hesitated. “He was going to ask you to marry him,” she said quietly. She’d been carrying it around for months and while she knew it would probably only hurt Rachel more, she just couldn’t keep it from Rachel any longer. Telling Rachel now was just like ripping off a Band-Aid. She didn’t want to wait and bring him up another time and risk upsetting Rachel another day. She already felt guilty as it was. “Even before the baby, he was going to ask you to marry him.”

“I know,” Rachel said quietly. “He asked me and he told me he told Ethan while we were in Costa Rica, so I just assumed you knew, too.”

Quinn winced. “You aren’t mad I didn’t tell you?”

Rachel shook her head. “No, and it doesn’t matter anymore anyway.”

“I’m sorry you miss him so much,” Quinn said sincerely.

“It’s actually been okay,” Rachel said quietly. “I don’t even think of him that often. I don’t know why I got so upset tonight.”

“Do you want to get out of here? Let’s leave. We can go back to my place, since it’s closer.”

“Okay,” Rachel agreed.

They unlocked and opened the bathroom door to see Hannah looking at them wryly.

“Seriously, is hiding in bathrooms an Ohio thing or what?”

They both laughed and shook their heads.

“Shut up,” Quinn said.

Hannah peered closer at Rachel. “Were you crying?”

Rachel blushed fiercely. “No.”

Hannah smiled sympathetically. “You were crying.”

“I was not crying.”

Hannah smiled crookedly and exchanged a glance with Quinn. “He really wasn’t that worth it, you know,” she said. She glanced at Quinn. “Neither of them were.”

Quinn rolled her eyes. “We’re leaving.”

Hannah saluted them. “Roman Empress, Kill Bill lady, it was nice to see you both. Hope you drop in again.”

Rachel laughed. “I hope not,” she teased. She kissed Hannah’s cheek. “See you later,” she said, grabbing Quinn by the arm. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

They left and took a cab back to Quinn’s apartment. They sat huddled in the back, Rachel resting her head on Quinn’s shoulder, their hands absently intertwined.

\--

They spent another Thanksgiving together, this time hosted at Quinn’s apartment. Quinn’s mother visited again and Judy Fabray took over most of the cooking duties. Quinn spent three days reminding her mother that Rachel was vegan and to be sure to prepare some kind of vegan alternative, so she was thoroughly annoyed when there was really _nothing_ for Rachel to eat when the day came. But Rachel being Rachel ate it anyway and gushed about how good everything was, even if she didn’t eat it in particularly large quantities. She generally kept to a vegan diet, but she strayed when the situation dictated it.

Still, despite how epically her mother didn’t come through for her once again, Quinn didn’t think it was such a bad Thanksgiving tradition to start. After her mother took a cab back to her hotel, Quinn sat on the couch, sprawled over Rachel.

She put her hands on her stomach.

“I’m so full, it’s disgusting.”

“Your mom is a really good cook.”

“You barely ate.”

“Well, you know…vegan.”

Quinn laughed. “That truly is an alternate lifestyle, Rachel.”

The brunette chuckled. “Oh, shut up,” she said softly.

Quinn swatted at Rachel’s thigh. “You shut up.”

\--

The period between Thanksgiving and New Years’ Eve was always somewhat festive because Rachel’s birthday, Hanukkah and Christmas came in between.

Rachel had a difficult relationship with her birthday. When she was a child, she never had enough friends to invite over for a birthday party. When she little, before cliques emerged like the Indian caste system, most people wouldn’t let their kids come over because of her fathers.

When she got a little older, other kids didn’t like her anyway so it didn’t matter if their parents didn’t want their kid hanging out with her. As a teenager, her parents tended to forget her birthday because it tended to come in the kerfuffle of Hanukkah and the holiday drama that December wrought on everyone. They’d usually remember around New Years’ Eve on their way out to celebrate with friends and they’d always apologize, but they repeated it every year.

Then when she moved out to New York and met Rex, he always threw her birthday parties, but she was certain the people came more for him than for her. She wasn’t all that certain if anyone would come to a birthday party organized just by her, so she really didn’t bother organizing a dinner or anything for her birthday. She knew she would be humiliated and depressed if she invited people, they RSVP’ed and then didn’t show up. One of her biggest social anxieties was being the only person at a huge table and having no one show up just because she wasn’t important enough for them.

Hannah and Quinn took her out for dinner and drinks and that was honestly enough. When she was younger, all she wanted to be was popular, but now she had people who pretended to be her friend for other reasons and she realized that all she really wanted was good friends. Popularity was much emptier than she thought it was, although in all honestt, the first inkling she had of that was while she was still in high school when Quinn was pregnant had _no one_ to really support her.

Quinn followed her back to her apartment and they were lounging on the couch watching TV when Quinn pulled a box out of her purse.

“Here,” she said shyly, passing it to Rachel.

“What’s this?”

Quinn rolled her eyes. “It’s a bomb. Boom,” she said dryly. “You dope, it’s your birthday present.”

Rachel smiled at her. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said. “You bought me dinner.”

“I split that with Hannah.” Quinn paused. “Anyway. It’s nothing big. It’s just…just open it.”

Rachel opened it and blinked. “A watch?”

“I noticed you aren’t wearing a watch anymore.”

Rachel swallowed hard. The watch she’d worn for years was the Movado watch that Rex had given her for her eighteenth birthday/Hanukkah present. She couldn’t wear it anymore.

“Thank you,” Rachel said softly. “It’s beautiful,” she said, admiring it.

“I know it’s not the same as your blingy Movado watch, but--”

Rachel laughed softly. “I love it.”

It was a silver tone Anne Klein watch with Swarvoski crystals and Rachel loved it on sight. She pulled it out and it fit on her wrist perfectly.

“I had them adjust the band and take a couple of those clips out,” Quinn said. “Because of your abnormally small wrists.”

Rachel laughed. She’d complained about her abnormally small wrists before and each time Quinn had told her to shut up, but it seemed like Quinn listened.

“Thank you,” Rachel said again, pulling Quinn into a hug and kissing her cheek. “I love it.”

Quinn played with Rachel’s hair. “You’re welcome,” she murmured fondly. “Happy birthday.”

They leaned into one another and settled onto the couch, staring at the TV.

\--

Quinn went home to Lima for Christmas and Rachel begged off on all of Quinn’s cajoling to come home with her. She had a show the next day anyway.

“Here,” Rachel said, passing Quinn her Christmas present as they separated the day Quinn flew back to Lima.

“What is it?”

“It’s a death ray,” Rachel said. “It will aid you in your desires for world domination which I know you entertain.”

Quinn playfully shoved Rachel.

“You brute,” Rachel complained good-naturedly.

“Can I open it?”

“It’s _your_ present, Quinn.”

Quinn grinned and opened it. She blinked when she saw the box.

“I thought we were on a bit of a jewelry theme,” Rachel said wryly.

Quinn opened the box and stared when she saw the cross necklace.

“You used to wear one….forgive the pun, but religiously. And now I don’t see you wear it much. I thought I might give you one that suited you and when I saw this, I thought of you.” Rachel shrugged and gave Quinn a hesitant smile.

“It’s beautiful,” Quinn breathed. “Put on me, okay?”

She’d gone through a lot of changes since high school, especially related to religion. It was still important to her, but it didn’t rule her life the way it used to, and she didn’t become riddled with self-hate and self-disappointment when she fell below religiously-oriented expectations. But it was still pretty important to her and it was nice to have someone acknowledge that it was, because most people didn’t. Or if they did, they tended to be pretty disparaging about it.

“Okay.”

“I love it,” Quinn declared, looking at herself while holding up her compact. “Thank you.”

Rachel smiled and pushed Quinn’s hair back. She looked at it admiringly. “I think it looks perfect on you,” she said. “Have a good trip, Quinn. Tell your mom I said hello.”  
  
“I will,” Quinn promised. “I’ll see you on New Years Eve, okay? And this year, _I_ pick the restaurant.”

Rachel put her hands up in mock surrender. “Never let it be said that I do not allow parity to enter into a relationship. Since I chose the restaurant last year, I am more than willing to acquiesce in the decision-making regarding the choice of restaurant to you.”

“You are so very strange,” Quinn said. “You take forever to say things that other people can communicate in just a few words.”

“I know this.” Rachel gave her a warm, toothy smile. “And I also know you love it,” she said, swatting at Quinn’s shoulder when the blonde rolled her eyes. “Now go, or you’ll miss your flight.”

\--

Quinn knew Rachel was Jewish and didn’t celebrate Christmas, but it still made her feel bad to think of her friend spending the holiday alone. She frequently complained about her sister, was regularly embarrassed of her mother and had no relationship with her father, but she had no idea what it would feel like to have _no_ family like Rachel. Her family made her furious and often made her feel inept and inadequate, but at least they were _there_ and they made her feel like she had a place in the world.

After dinner, she called Rachel and Rachel sounded as cheerful and chirpy as ever, but it sounded a little forced to Quinn and she called Rachel on it.

“Rex’s mom called me,” Rachel admitted. “To wish me a happy Christmas. It just made me feel bad because his family was always so nice to me.” She laughed softly. “Almost like having a family of my own.”

“Sorry,” Quinn said quietly. “I know that must have been hard.”

“It’s fine,” Rachel said. She blew out a slow breath. “How about you? How’s your mom? Is she behaving?”

Quinn smiled. “This year was better than other years,” she assured, and it really had been.

They chatted for a while, but they’d only see each other a few days ago and so there wasn’t much to catch each other up on.

“I’ll see you on New Years Eve,” Rachel said.

“Yeah,” Quinn replied. “See you then.”

\--

On New Years’ Eve, Rachel answered her door to Quinn and beamed.

“Hey, stranger,” she greeted the blonde, pulling Quinn inside by the hand.

“Hey, stranger,” Quinn replied.

They exchanged a quick hug and Rachel put on her coat and scarf and the two made their way to the restaurant.

\--

Rachel thought it was sweet that although Quinn mocked her relentlessly and mercilessly for being vegan, Quinn never failed to choose a vegan restaurant or a restaurant with a lot of vegan alternatives when they went out together.

“You like this place, right?” Quinn asked solicitously.

Rachel’s lips curled into a smile. “I love this place.”

\--

After dinner, they returned to Rachel’s apartment.

They stood out on Rachel’s balcony and looked at over the city. She’d specifically chosen this apartment because she’d loved the balcony at the apartment she shared with Rex and when she saw this one, it reminded her of it.

“I can’t believe it’s another New Year,” Quinn commented.

“Where did the year go?” Rachel wondered.

Quinn smiled. “Remember when we were kids and a year seemed so long?”

“Well, we were kids in Lima. I think a Lima year is longer than normal years,” Rachel laughed. “Every day in Lima felt eternal, but the days here seem way too short.”

“I know how you feel,” Quinn murmured.

They watched the city below celebrate in jubilation and heard the shouts of the city counting down to the New Year.

“Do you want to go inside and watch TV?” Rachel asked. “We could watch the ball drop.”

“I’m good here.”

Rachel smiled. “Me too.”

“3…2…1…”

The streets below shouted “Happy New Year!”

They pressed their lips together in a quick, celebratory kiss and hugged one another tightly.

“Happy New Year,” Rachel said quietly.

“Happy New Year,” Quinn echoed. “Everything is new again, just like last year.”

Rachel laughed softly and pulled away. She swatted at Quinn’s stomach. “You’re such a stubborn cynic.”

Quinn grinned at Rachel and reached out to brush Rachel’s bangs out of her eyes and Rachel felt her stomach knot up and her heart speed up. She licked dry lips to moisten them,

‘Oh no no no no no,’ she thought, because she knew this feeling. She’d experienced it before, so she knew this feeling. ‘No no no no no.’

She knew this feeling and while it had sometimes been unwelcome, like the first time she felt it looking at Noah Puckerman, it’d never been quite so unwelcome as it was now.

‘Oh no no no.’

Quinn smiled at her and Rachel felt her stomach twist again. Quinn’s smiled drooped slightly and she looked concerned. “You okay, Rach? You look …weird.”

Rachel swallowed hard. “I’m fine.”

‘Oh no no no.’

If she were honest with herself, she knew it’d been building up for a while, but that tiny little kiss had brought all the feelings and emotions she wanted to suppress to the surface.

There was no way she could deny it to herself.

‘Oh no no no.’

She knew this feeling-- this first stirring of flustered attraction. Quinn looked at her again and Rachel smiled back, unable to help herself.

‘Oh no no no ’

This could not be happening. Quinn was her friend and this, this would ruin _everything_.

‘Oh no no no.’

\--

If Quinn didn’t know better, she’d swear Rachel was avoiding her. Before the first of the year, they were texting every day, talking on the phone at least once every other day and seeing each other every week or at least every other week. Now she was finding it more difficult to reach Rachel-- she wasn’t texting back or returning phone calls and she kept claiming she was busy with the show so she couldn’t hang out.

“I think Rach is mad at me,” Quinn sighed to Hannah one evening while they studied together.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Rachel is tiny, crazy and dangerous. If she were mad at you, you would definitely know due to the fact she would glass you in the throat.”

Quinn laughed at the description which seemed befitting of her friend. “Well, I think she’s avoiding me,” she said dejectedly, unable to keep the hurt she felt out of her voice.

Hannah paused and set her pen down. She patted Quinn’s hand. “I’m sure she’s just busy.”

“I guess.”

But when it came to the end of January and she hadn’t seen Rachel _once_ in person, she got a little fed up.

She texted Rachel early in the morning on the last day of the month and asked if she had time to meet for dinner.

_Sorry, I have a show tonight_

That never stopped Rachel before. Even when Rachel had a show, they’d managed to have a late dinner.

Quinn decided it was better to confront the issue head on and so she dropped by Rachel’s apartment that night a few hours after she knew the show was over.

Rachel opened the door and looked at her in surprise. “What’re you doing here?”

“Are you avoiding me?” Quinn demanded.

Rachel stared at Quinn in disbelief. She couldn’t believe Quinn just asked her that, but then again. Quinn was pretty straight-forward.

“I…” Rachel trailed off. “Come in,” she said, holding the door open.

She stepped aside to make some room for Quinn and once the blonde stepped in she shut the door and walked toward her couch. “Are you hungry?” she asked, avoiding the question. “I’m eating dinner,” she said, pointing to her salad. “I could make you something or we could order something or--”

“So this is why you couldn’t have dinner with me tonight?” Quinn asked bitterly. “So you could eat salad out of a bag?”

Rachel swallowed a sigh. Once she became aware of her attraction to Quinn, Rachel felt the need to take a break from their friendship. It wasn’t that she was uncomfortable with the attraction in and of itself. She’d only dated men, but she was open to dating women, it was just that she hadn’t met a woman she wanted to date yet. And to be fully honesty, she didn’t _want_ to date Quinn-- Rachel knew it would end badly, and she didn’t want to lose Quinn was a friend. Quinn was just too important to her. And anyway, the attraction was painfully pointless because Quinn was ridiculously heterosexual.

It was all just too much. She thought if she could just have some time away from Quinn, it would diminish the attraction, but she’d missed Quinn terribly and felt awful for dodging her. And the time apart did nothing to eradicate the attraction because seeing Quinn at her door made Rachel feel it all over again.

Rachel smiled at her. “I’m sorry,” she said sincerely. “I’ve just….been in a weird head space.”

“You’re always in a weird head space,” Quinn said balefully. “What’s been so different?”

“I’m sorry,” Rachel said, contrite, but she could see how much she hurt Quinn with her avoidance. “I… I’ve just been a little down,” she said, and it wasn’t entirely a lie. “I don’t know, it’s like, dysthymia or something, but not. I just needed time to myself. ”

Quinn softened, but only slightly. “And so you decided the best thing for that is to isolate yourself?” she demanded.

Rachel smiled wryly. The only person she’d really avoided was Quinn, but then again, she didn’t spend much time with anyone other than Quinn. “It made more sense in my head,” she joked. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Stay, I’ll make you something and we can watch TV.”

Quinn gave her a fuller smile. “I’ll make myself a sandwich or something. I haven’t eaten yet either.”

Rachel watched as Quinn made herself at home in her kitchen. She sighed. She couldn’t avoid Quinn anymore.

Quinn came back with an organic peanut butter and jelly sandwich and flopped down next to Rachel and swiped the remote, plucking it right out of Rachel’s hands. “You always steal it at my place,” she explained before Rachel could protest. She put her feet in Rachel’s lap and smiled shamelessly.

Rachel smiled back, but her stomach twisted.

‘Oh no,’ she thought. ‘No. No. No.’

\--

The next couple months were torturous. Her show came to a close and so she spent more time with Quinn, even when it just involved helping Quinn study. She became acutely aware of how frequently they’d invaded each other’s personal space, because Quinn invaded hers all the time and it was simultaneously welcome and unwelcome. They spent fucking _Valentine’s Day_ together, bemoaning their single status.

They spent _way_ too much time together and it was becoming _too_ much and so Rachel did the only thing she could think of to do: she asked Hannah to set her up with someone.

Hannah was blunt.

“No.”

“Why not?” Rachel demanded.

“Because you’re too insane for any of my sane friends and too sane for my insane friends. So no.”

“But you were always trying to hook me up with someone even when I was with Rex!”

“I know, but now you’re A.R.”

“A.R.?”

“After Rex,” Hannah said with a grin. “Sorry girl,” she said. “But you’re on your own with this one. But how about I come over tonight and keep you company?”

“Yes,” Rachel breathed in relief. “Do that!”

“Great. I’ll bring Quinn along, too. Bye!”

Hannah hung up and Rachel groaned in frustration. “Fuck.”

\--

Quinn wasn’t an idiot.

She couldn’t say exactly how her friendship with Rachel had changed over the past few months, but it _definitely_ had. It was definitely subtle, but it was there. Rachel had very subtly pulled away from her, and it was so subtle that Quinn really couldn’t say _how_ , it was more just something she felt. Rachel still acted the same way, smiled the same way, did things the same way, but there was just this vibe. Something had changed.

The only reason she wasn’t in full-on panic mode was that they were still hanging out. When Rachel seemed to avoid her those first few weeks of the New Year, Quinn was first upset, then worried and finally really afraid.

She still felt uneasy and she wanted to ask Rachel about it, but Rachel was pragmatic and would want specific illustrative examples and Quinn didn’t have any.

Rachel was one of the few truly close friends she had in the city, and Quinn didn’t want to lose her. She didn’t know what caused this shift. She just wanted some answers because it felt like something was hanging between them every time they hung out-- silences weren’t comfortable anymore. Things didn’t feel the way they used to feel.

She and Hannah dropped by Rachel’s apartment with food, alcohol and movies. Rachel greeted them boisterously and she just seemed like herself, but she really didn’t _look_ at Quinn and Quinn _felt_ that.

They’d just finished pouring a bottle of wine and their glasses were full in varying degrees and were about halfway through the pilot episode of _Dexter_ when Hannah stood up, raising herself to her feet by putting her hands on Rachel’s left thigh and Quinn’s right thigh.

“Okay,” Hannah said. “I can _not_ spend a Friday night like this. You guys are the weird antisocial mountain man Unabomber people, not me.”

“Mountain man?” Rachel repeated.

“Unabomber?” Quinn asked.

“I’m going to go,” Hannah declared. “I love you both, but I’m going to go.”

“But you said you’d keep me company!” Rachel said, just a little too desperately for Quinn’s liking.

“Well, that’s why I brought Quinn, because I was fully aware of my flaky nature.”

“But--”

“Bye!”

Rachel looked insultingly disappointed that they were alone together.

“Do you like her or something?” Quinn asked spitefully, unable to take it any longer. “I can run after her and bring her back if you want to hook up with her. I can _leave_ you know.”

Rachel’s eyes were wide, startled. “ _Hannah_?” she asked incredulously.

“Yes, _Hannah_ ,” Quinn said, and she had no idea where that was coming from because really, what would make her think Rachel would be attracted to Hannah? As far as Quinn knew Rachel had only dated men and she never seemed even remotely interested in women, but she really couldn’t think of an alternative explanation for why Rachel looked so stunningly disappointed by Hannah’s abrupt departure.

“Hannah?” Rachel repeated in a squeak.

“ _Yes_ , Hannah,” Quinn said resentfully.

Rachel laughed so hard she fell off the couch.

It kind of made Quinn feel better. _Kind of_.  
\--

Once Rachel finally stopped laughing long enough to get off the floor and sit on the couch, some of the tension eased up between them. They finished the entire first season of _Dexter_ in a marathon viewing that night and by then, it was fairly late. Rachel went off to her bedroom and Quinn crashed on Rachel’s couch.

The couch wasn’t nearly as comfortable for sleeping as the couch Rachel used to have in the apartment with Rex, though Quinn refused to entertain thoughts to explain why that would be considering the couches were nearly identical. She tossed and turned, but the last straw came when she fell off the couch and smacked her foot into one of the legs of Rachel’s coffee table.

It hurt. A lot.

She crossly grabbed her pillow and walked to Rachel’s bedroom in a huff. Typical Rachel, she was curled up into a small ball in the _middle_ of the bed. She rolled her eyes at the sight because of _course_ Rachel would take up as much space as possible but still do it in her own very mini way. She climbed in and pushed Rachel.

“Make some space,” she whispered. “Your couch is killing my back.”

Rachel muttered sleepily. “Daddy, I don’t _want_ another glass of water. I’ll pee the bed.”

“Don’t you dare,” Quinn said.

Rachel roused and she looked at Quinn in confusion. “Quinn?”

“Make some space!”

“Why are you in my room?”

“Your couch is killing me. Either make some space or take the couch.”

Rachel huffed. “I don’t think I should have to sleep on the couch in my own apartment.”

“I’m the guest, so really, etiquette dictates that you do.”

“You’re hardly a guest,” Rachel sputtered. “You’re here as much as I am!”

“Yeah, well, not so much lately,” Quinn sniped. She nudged Rachel. “Move over.”

“Fine,” Rachel groused, making space. “But don’t hog my blankets. You seem the type.”

“ _You_ seem the type,” Quinn muttered under her breath.

She crawled in next to Rachel and listened to the sound of Rachel breathing evening out indicating she’d fallen asleep again.

“I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille,” Rachel muttered.

Quinn shook her head. _Of course._

Still, she felt more affection than exasperation and she reached out to fondly tousle Rachel’s hair. Rachel was a crazy person, but she was _her_ crazy person.

\--

She woke up early the next morning feeling thirsty. She’d had four glasses of wine the night before which was about one glass too many. She didn’t drink enough water either. She smiled slightly when she saw Rachel curled up, still sleeping, facing toward her. She reached out and cupped Rachel’s cheek, without really thinking about it. She smiled more fully when she saw Rachel’s lips curve into a small smile and Rachel burrow even deeper into the sheets.

She wasn’t sure how long she was doing that for, just touching Rachel’s cheek and staring at her. Quinn didn’t even realize how _creepy_ that was until Rachel’s eyes fluttered open and she pulled back and blinked, staring at Quinn in surprise.

“Sorry,” Quinn said. “I…uh…I wanted to know if you wanted a glass of water.”

Rachel sniffed and blinked, becoming more alert. “I do,” she said. She smiled crookedly and pushed at Quinn’s shoulder. “But since you’re my _guest_ and all,” she said, making air quotes around guest, “I’ll go get it.”

“That sounds even better.”

Rachel gave her at tiny smile. “I’ll be right back.”

Rachel left leaving Quinn behind in a bed that felt too large and too small at the same time. She released a breath.

“What the _fuck_?” she whispered to herself.

\--

Shortly after that, Rachel got a recurring role on some TV show that filmed in LA and she was going to be gone for six weeks.

Quinn had to admit, as much as she would miss Rachel, it was also kind of a relief, because she was _mortified_ for staring at Rachel like some kind of creeper and she needed some space to figure out what that meant.

“Don’t let LA take you away, okay?” Quinn joked on their last night together.

Rachel laughed. “Don’t be silly. This is home-- I’ve got Broadway, Central Park and you.”

Quinn smiled. “Well, when you have Hollywood, smog and palm trees, try to remember that.”

Rachel laughed again, but Quinn had a feeling Rachel would be gone longer than she thought.


	7. Chapter 7

 

Quinn glared down at her textbook and made a face. She felt a little sorry for herself considering she was stuck inside her apartment studying _on her birthday_ because she was too busy with school to do anything and she was a little lonely since Rachel had spent the past month in LA filming.

It was nine pm on a Thursday and she had a hankering for a vanilla latte and a BLT. It was ridiculous. She was going to become enormous at this rate. This was the part about the MBA/JD program that Columbia failed to mention on their website or in their brochure.

Someone knocked on her door and she grumbled to herself and thought it better be some mindreading genie to legitimize this unanticipated interruption to her studying. She peeked to see who it could be and was startled to see Rachel.

She threw the door open. “Friend!”

Rachel smiled at her. “Hey stranger,” she drawled. “Happy birthday.” She held up two cups of coffee contained in a tray in one hand and a cake box with a white paper bag on top of it in the other. “I thought you might be hungry and/or thirsty.” She had her purse and a shopping bag slung over her shoulder.

Quinn’s smile was so wide it threatened to break her face in half. All that time she spent angsting about that morning at Rachel’s apartment asking herself ‘what does it _mean_?!’ didn’t matter anymore. She missed Rachel so much over the past month and it felt like such a relief to have her there.

“Hey stranger,” Quinn replied, she took the cake box and the white bag from Rachel and pulled her inside. “Get in here.”

“It’s a BLT,” Rachel said, gesturing toward the white bag with her head. “It’s not from Westville, but I thought it would do. I thought you might be hungry since you said you were going to stay up late tonight studying.”

Quinn stared at her. “If one of those coffees is a vanilla latte, I’m marrying you even if you are a mindreading freak.”

Rachel gave her a small smile. “I’m not a mindreader, you’re just a creature of habit. You crave the same things every time you study this late.”

“Oh,” Quinn said. “Right.” She smiled at Rachel. “What are you doing here? I thought you couldn’t get away?”

“It’s your birthday,” Rachel said simply. “I can only stay for a few hours. I have to go back. And we’re a little behind on filming and I signed up for another episode, so I’m going to be staying a little longer than I thought. I thought I’d come by and say happy birthday since it was going to be a while before I could see you again.”

Quinn beamed at her. “You’re insane,” she said fondly. She hugged Rachel. “But thank you.”

Rachel held her. “Happy birthday,” she murmured.

\--

Quinn ate her BLT while Rachel ate a Portobello mushroom sandwich and then they sliced the cake that Rachel brought. Quinn rolled her eyes as Rachel insisted on singing all the many Happy Birthday variations, including the one about “you smell like a monkey, and you look like one, too!”

They’d just polished off a slice of cake when Rachel passed her a small box wrapped in black gift wrap and tied with a red bow, pulled out from the shopping bag that Rachel brought with her.

“Happy birthday,” she said softly, smiling.

Quinn took it. “Haven’t you done enough?” she asked with a smile. “You are setting an unreasonably high bar for future birthday celebrations.”

Rachel laughed. “It’s not a big deal, just open it.”

Quinn unwrapped it gingerly and smiled when she saw what it was. “A digital camera?”

“You said you broke yours when you dropped it in the toilet. You still haven’t explained how that happened, by the way.

“And I’m never going to,” Quinn said, blushing fiercely. “And stop thinking it’s dirty, because it’s not!”

The truth of the matter was, she thought she saw some weird mole growth on the side of her neck, so she used it to take a picture, but when she saw it up close, she realized it was just from the black Boscia mask she’d used and she’d been so relieved that she dropped that stupid camera in the toilet. But she was embarrassed for herself and so it was a story she was definitely not planning on sharing with anyone, ever.

They spent another hour together and then Rachel gently slapped Quinn’s thigh. “I’m going to let you get back to studying.”

“You don’t have to go,” Quinn protested.

“I do, actually,” Rachel said regretfully. “I need to go back.”

“Oh,” Quinn said, disappointed. She threw herself at Rachel and hugged her as tightly as she could. “Thank you for coming home, even if it was just for a little while.”

Rachel stroked her hair. “Have a great birthday party on Saturday.”

“There’s no way I could talk you into coming is there?”

Rachel laughed softly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This is all I could finagle. We’re filming Saturday _and_ Sunday. I would be here if I could, you know that. Your birthday is important to me. That’s why I’m here.”

“I know,” Quinn said quietly. “I was just making sure.” She smiled. “Don’t work too hard,” Quinn said, still holding tightly to Rachel. “And hurry up and come home for good.”

“I will,” Rachel whispered. “I’ll be home soon. But I have to go now.”

“Okay,” Quinn whispered back. She swallowed with difficultly and stared at Rachel. “Rach,” she breathed. “You really can’t stay the night? My couch misses you, you know.”

“I can’t,” Rachel whispered apologetically. “I have to go. If I leave now, I’ll just be able to make it to the airport in time for my flight.”

“Okay,” Quinn said. She moved her head closer so her chin rested on Rachel’s shoulder. “Just come home soon.”

“I will,” Rachel said, stroking Quinn’s hair.

Quinn moved her head back to regard Rachel for a long moment. She moved her head close and their noses grazed.

They were so so so very close.

“Rachel,” Quinn whimpered. “Rach, can’t you just call in sick and stay a few more hours?”

Rachel pulled away, squirming away from Quinn’s embrace. “I have to go,” she whispered. “I have to go to the airport. Happy Birthday, Quinn. I’ll see you soon.”

Rachel left so quickly, Quinn couldn’t say anything.

“What the fuck?” Quinn breathed, when the door closed.

She didn’t get any more studying done.

\--

She tried calling Rachel all of the next day, but Rachel’s phone was off. Quinn assumed Rachel forgot to turn on her phone once she landed back in LA. She didn’t want to entertain the notion that maybe Rachel left it off on purpose. Quinn only left two voicemails because she didn’t want to seem even more psycho by leaving a message every time she called.

Rachel finally called her at 10pm EST.

“Hey,” Rachel said. “I just got your messages. Is everything okay?”

“What the fuck happened between us yesterday?” Quinn blurted.

Something almost happened, but Quinn wasn’t sure what was going on between them. It’d been building for a while and she just wanted some answers.

There were a few moments of stunned silence as Rachel tried to gather her thoughts. Her first instinct was to play dumb, but she thought Quinn deserved more than that. But she really didn’t know what to say. She’d gone back to New York for a few _hours_ just for Quinn’s birthday and while she knew she went back mostly because Quinn sounded lonely and stressed, she wasn’t sure why it’d felt so important. The flight one way was longer than the time she’d spent with Quinn, it’d been a completely impractical and irrational thing to do, and yet, she’d impetuously decided to do it without a second thought. She had to concede that not many women would do that for their platonic female friend-- if any. And then….she’d been very tempted to kiss Quinn when their noses grazed, and they were so close she could feel Quinn’s breath against her face and Quinn’s breasts pressing against her. It seemed like Quinn wanted her to kiss her, but that just seemed way too impossible to Rachel. She really couldn’t blame Quinn for wanting some answers, but Rachel really had none to give because she didn’t know either.

“It was just your birthday, Quinn,” Rachel said. “That’s all.”

“Oh,” Quinn said softly. She paused. “Nothing else?” she asked, wishing she could suppress the note of desperation that colored her voice.

Rachel was quiet for a long moment. “No,” Rachel said. “Nothing else. What….what are you saying happened? Do you think something happened?”

“I…” Quinn’s voice cracked slightly “No,” she whispered after a moment’s pause. “It just really meant a lot that you came. Thank you,” she said. “Sorry I got so abrasive. You just left in such a hurry that I guess I was just upset we didn’t have a proper goodbye.”

“Yeah,” Rachel said softly. “Sorry. I had a flight to catch…”

“Yeah,” Quinn said. “I know…”

“I should go,” Rachel said. “We’ll talk soon, okay?”

“Okay.”

\--

In the past when Rachel had a secret, she confided in Rex or Quinn and since neither of those people were viable options, Rachel called Hannah, who was a blabbermouth, but could usually be counted on to keep a secret when it really mattered.

“I almost kissed Quinn,” Rachel blurted.

Hannah paused. “Were you guys drunk or sober?”

“Sober. I think I like her,” Rachel whispered, miserably.

“Well, that’s hugely shocking.”

“I can’t tell if you’re sarcastic or not,” Rachel complained.

“God, can’t you tell _yet_? Maybe you are Asperger’s. Of course it’s not hugely shocking, you doofus.”

“This is so bad,” Rachel whispered.

“It’s really not as bad as you think. It’s obviously mutu--”

“God, I’m so embarrassed,” Rachel interrupted. ”She probably knows! Oh God, of course she knows. I’m _mortified_. I am never coming home again,” Rachel moaned. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Wait, Rachel. Rachel. Rachel!”

But the connection was dead.

“You fucker.” Hannah muttered.

\--

Once filming her guest spot was over, Rachel was offered another recurring role on another show that filmed in LA and she took it.

“I told you not to let LA take you away!” Quinn exclaimed. She was outwardly supportive because Rachel sounded excited, but she was inwardly disappointed that Rachel wasn’t coming home yet.

Rachel laughed softly. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I’ll be home soon.”

But she was thinking maybe not quite so soon.

\--

“So, stranger,” Quinn drawled as they spoke on the phone one night two months later. “Since you haven’t been home in two months, I thought I could visit you this time.”

There was a very brief pause and then Rachel’s laughter was warm. “I’m coming home next month, you don’t need to be so dramatic.”

“Maybe I just miss LA,” Quinn teased. “I used to go up every couple weeks while I was at UCSD. I’m on summer break from school, you know.”

“I do know.”

“Anyway. I thought I could visit since I miss LA so much. It really has nothing to do with you,” Quinn teased. “I’m just looking for a place to stay.”

Rachel laughed. “LA and my couch would love to have you.”

\--

The first thing Quinn noticed was that Rachel’s hair was _long_. She supposed she wouldn’t have noticed it’d gotten so long if they were spending more time together, but it’d been two months since they’d last seen each other and so Quinn noticed immediately.

Quinn pulled Rachel in for a hug. “Hey, stranger”

Rachel rested her head against Quinn. “Hey stranger.”

“Your hair is long,” Quinn commented softly, running her hands through Rachel’s hair and playing with full dark locks. “You look like Rapunzel.”

Rachel grinned. “It’s funny, I’ve always pictured her blond. More like you.”

“Your imagination is preposterous.”

Rachel swatted at Quinn’s shoulder. “ _You’re_ preposterous,” she shot back, but then she smiled. “But I’ve missed you anyway.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” Quinn said quietly. “Why do you think I’m here?”

Rachel smiled. “I’m glad you are.”

\--  
  
Things were…different. Peculiar. Quinn couldn’t put her finger on it. Once again, things _felt_ different but _seemed_ the same. Rachel drove her around in the car she was renting while she stayed in LA. Quinn was readily familiar with LA from her four years in California and didn’t need any touristy introduction to the city, so they spent her first night in LA getting take-out and holing up in the apartment Rachel was subletting.

Hannah texted each of them at the same time.

_You guys are SERIOUSLY some weird ass antisocial couple with complementary personality disorders! It’s LA! Get off the couch and do something together!_

“When she did she become so judgmental?” Rachel wondered.

“She’s always been judgmental,” Quinn replied.

“But in a way which is completely opposite from normal societal mores.”

“I know, right?”

\--

Things were fine the first night and even the second and third, but by the fourth night, there was no denying that there was something lingering unspoken between them. They spent much of their days apart-- Rachel was filming and so that left Quinn to catch up with college friends who lived in and around LA. But their nights were always spent together and soon that thing that lingered unspoken between them started to become stifling. The baby elephant in the room grew to be woolly mammoth sized.

Quinn thought that her twenty-two year old self would be appalled by how boring her vacation was going-- her nights were always spent having dinner with Rachel and then curled up on the couch together watching a movie or a TV program. It really wasn’t much of a vacation at least in terms of any activities. She could have stayed back in New York to watch TV and eat take-out, but then again, she wouldn’t be able to do it with Rachel.

The vacation really wasn’t much of _anything_ , but Quinn didn’t mind it-- in fact, she kind of liked it and she wouldn’t have traded it in for anything.

Some of it was just due to a change in personality and a shift in priorities. But it also had a lot to do with the girl she was hanging out with, because when she was dating Ethan, she frequently became frustrated when he wanted to stay in too often. But she didn’t mind it with Rachel even if the woman couldn’t watch a TV show or a movie without making _some_ kind of critical comment.

On the fourth consecutive night of watching TV pressed against each other that Quinn felt Rachel’s lips graze against the left side of her neck.

Startled, she turned her head quickly and saw Rachel had fallen asleep and was now burrowing into her and using her neck as a personal pillow. Quinn chuckled softly and her right hand shot out to cup Rachel’s cheek.

Rachel’s eyes fluttered open and when she saw Quinn, she gave Quinn a soft smile. Quinn smiled back and she rested her forehead against Rachel’s. Rachel’s hand drifted up to cover Quinn’s hand, still cupping her cheek. Rachel’s lips came to close to Quinn’s and they hovered only a few centimeters away from each other.

Rachel could feel Quinn’s breath releasing in soft little puffs. And then Rachel’s head jerked back and Rachel scrambled to her feet. “I should go to bed,” she said hoarsely. “Goodnight, Quinn.”

“Goodnight, Rach.” Quinn swallowed hard when she heard the door shut softly. She put her hand over her thumping heart, now beating in staccato. “What the _hell_?” she whispered.

\--

Rachel was already gone when Quinn woke up the next morning which was a departure from all the other days in which they’d at least eaten a quick breakfast together, playfully sniping at one another over coffee, toast and fake eggs before Rachel left for the set.

Quinn ruminated on the events of the night before for the entire day and she was practically bursting when Rachel finally came home.

“Hello,” Rachel greeted blithely with a bright smile like nothing happened. She dropped her purse on the floor and put her keys in the glass tumbler she kept on top of the console table by the door. She joined Quinn at the window and they stood at it together, looking into a neighboring building.

“Hi,” Quinn returned. She put her hands her hips and turned to glare at Rachel. “Rach! What the _hell_ happened between us last night?!”

“We ate Thai food and watched a bowdlerized version of the 80s classic film, _Heathers_ on TBS.”

God help her, but Quinn actually found that to be cute and charming as opposed to what it actually was-- completely off-putting and deliberately obtuse. Still, Rachel had always been strangely literal at times, despite the fact she liberally employed metaphor and simile to illustrate her points, and so Quinn decided to err on the side of caution by assuming Rachel was being sincerely clueless. After all, Rachel was often sincerely clueless, too.

“Something…something kind of happened last night,” Quinn said.

“I don’t recall anything happening. I dozed off, I woke up and then I went to bed. You slept on the couch,” Rachel said, crossing her arms over her chest and taking a few steps back.

“That’s why I said ‘kind of’ happened,” Quinn pointed out irritably.

“How does something ‘kind of’ happen? Either it happens or it doesn’t.”

Quinn wanted to _hate_ this girl, but she didn’t. She couldn’t. She just wished Rachel would make this a little easier because now she knew for sure Rachel was playing dumb. But Quinn knew Rachel had her reasons to keep playing dumb, just as Quinn had her own reasons for being unable to ignore this any longer.

“There was…I don’t know, a vibe.”

Rachel looked at her blankly. “I don’t know what you mean by that. What do you mean by there was a ‘vibe’?”

Quinn stared at her. “Are you _seriously_ asking me what I mean by vibe? Because I am pretty sure I’ve heard you use the word yourself at least once in the, like, twelve years we’ve known each other.”

Rachel crossed her arms. “I assure you I do not know what you mean,” she huffed.

Quinn rolled her eyes and sighed in exasperation. She was pretty sure she hated this woman. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “’Vibe,’ meaning a ‘distinctive emotional atmosphere,’ you big faker.”

Rachel stared at her, mouth slightly open.  
  
With Rachel Berry, Quinn had to be prepared for every possibly eventuality because Rachel was always prepared and so she spent the afternoon preparing what she was going to say and prepared for _everything_ Rachel could possibly say. She’d been fully prepared for Rachel feigning ignorance about the vibe between them the night before and was even prepared for the possibility that Rachel would pretend she had no idea what ‘vibe’ meant because she was above using slang or whatever it was that Rachel was going to claim before Quinn peremptorily struck her down.

“There was a vibe,” Quinn said quietly, a little pleadingly.

Rachel swallowed hard. She couldn’t play dumb anymore, and really, she felt like a jerk for doing it in the first place. It was just easier to play dumb sometimes than just be brave and face up to things. “Yes,” she admitted softly. “There was.”

She sighed and took Quinn by the hand leading her to the couch so they could sit and talk. But instead of sitting down, they just stood in front of it, facing one another, standing a few feet apart, They stared at each other, both of them crossing their arms protectively in front of the chests.

“You’re a jerk for pretending like you didn’t understand what I meant. You _suck_.”

“I know,” Rachel said. “I’m sorry. You just…you took me by surprise. I wasn’t prepared for this.”

“Well, I’m not going to just beat around the bush like I’m some eleven year old at my first boy-girl party, Rachel.”

Rachel stared at her for a moment and then laughed. “Fair enough,” she said wryly. “I…I don’t know what to say,” she admitted. “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to talk about this and we could just pretend it never happened.”

“I’m going to ignore that,” Quinn said dryly, “because it shows a surprising lack of emotional maturity on your part, although when I really think about it, not that surprising.”

Rachel gave her a small smile. “I wanted to kiss you last night,” she admitted. She bit her lower lip, and couldn’t meet Quinn’s eyes. “Did you want me to kiss you?”

Quinn swallowed with difficulty. “Yes,” she said quietly.

Rachel released a slow sigh. “Shoot,” she cursed softly.

Quinn nodded. “I know.”

“This is very bad.”

“I know,” Quinn said quietly. “It’s _horrible_.”

“Absolutely,” Rachel said. “And wildly inadvisable.”

“Wildly,” Quinn repeated, in agreement. “It is such a bad bad idea. It’s abysmal.”

“Definitely abysmal.” Rachel bit her lower lip. “But it wasn’t the first time I wanted to kiss you,” she said in whispered admission. Her cheeks reddened and she didn’t know where she found the bravery to admit that.

“It wasn’t the first time I wanted you to kiss me, either,” Quinn said quietly.

“Oh,” Rachel said softly. “I…I didn’t know that.”

“You’re going to kiss me now,” Quinn declared.

“You’re so bossy.”

“I know. So are you. Anyway. You’re going to kiss me now.”

Rachel gave her a small smile. “Okay,” she said softly. “Come here,” she whispered. “You are… way too far away.”

Quinn swallowed hard and took a few steps closer. “How’s this?” she asked, uncrossing her arms.

“Closer,” Rachel murmured.

Quinn swallowed hard and took another step. “Now?”

“Closer,” Rachel whispered, but she took two steps, closing the gap between them.

“How about now?” Quinn whispered.

“Closer,” Rachel said, she wrapped her arms around Quinn’s waist, pulling Quinn even closer into her personal space. Her lips lightly grazed Quinn’s. “This could change everything,” she warned. “You’re my best friend, this could ruin everything.” She smiled slyly. “All of my favorite people are in this room, you know.”

Quinn laughed softly. “Egotist,” she chided. She sighed. “It’s just a kiss,” Quinn said lightly. “We can blame it on the alcohol.”

“We didn’t drink any alcohol. At least, I didn’t.” Rachel looked suddenly worried and she took a few steps back. “Did you?” she asked concerned. She wasn’t about to take advantage of Quinn.

“No,” Quinn said, taking a few steps closer to bridge the space Rachel just made between their bodies. “But if it doesn’t go the way we want, we’ll just pretend we drank a lot and blame it on that,” Quinn murmured. “My head is kind of spinning anyway.”

“Mine too,” Rachel said softly.

“So,” Quinn said grazing her lips across Rachel’s chin. “We’ll blame it on the wine.”

“Right,” Rachel murmured. “We’ll blame it on the wine.”

“You’re going to kiss me now.”

“Okay,” Rachel said softly and she captured Quinn’s lips with her own.

It was slow and tentative at first-- lips against lips, like kids experimenting for the first time after a chase around the school yard. Just lips slowly brushing against lips. But then Rachel’s tongue ran across Quinn’s lower lip. Quinn moaned into Rachel’s mouth from low in her throat at the first stroke of Rachel’s tongue. The kiss deepened and there was no more tentative exploration. Rachel held Quinn even tighter, pulling her even closer, like that was even possible, their arms entangling and finally fell onto the couch, their mouths still desperately searching, licking, and sucking.

“We should stop,” Rachel whispered, when they pulled apart breathlessly. “We should stop before we can’t. This could…it could ruin everything. It’ll change everything.”

“We’re blaming the wine tonight, remember?” Quinn murmured. “I promise,” she whispered. “We’ll talk all about it later. But right now, we’re blaming the wine.” She stroked Rachel’s face. “It’s just a kiss.”

“Just a kiss,” Rachel echoed. “It’s the wine’s fault.”

“Right,” Quinn whispered. “You’re going to kiss me again now.”

“Okay,” Rachel whispered back and she cupped Quinn’s cheeks in her hands and captured her lips again.

\--

“Why were you so resistant to talking about this like adults?” Quinn asked once she caught her breath. Her body was draped across Rachel’s, her head pressing into Rachel’s stomach. Her eyes were closed as Rachel absently played with her hair.

Rachel paused. “I hate change when things are good,” she admitted. “I liked the way things are, I didn’t want things to change and have them get worse.” She paused. “Your hair is really soft. What kind of shampoo and conditioner do you use?”

“You’re kind of….not brave,” Quinn declared fondly, trying to be as diplomatic as she could. “And stop trying to distract me with compliments about my hair. I just use Pantene.”

“I use Pantene and my hair isn’t as nice as yours.”

“Maybe I just have genetically nicer hair than you, Rapunzel,” Quinn joked.

Rachel laughed softly. “Maybe,” she said. “I could fathom that.”

Quinn laughed suddenly.

“What?” Rachel asked.

“Your stomach just growled,” Quinn chuckled.

Rachel blushed. “Oh/”

“I’m hungry, too,” Quinn said. She reluctantly disentangled herself from Rachel, because really, considering how small Rachel was, she was an amazingly and surprisingly comfortable pillow. She rose to her feet and held her hand out to Rachel for the brunette to take. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll buy you dinner.”

Rachel looked like she was going to protest. “I’ll buy you--”

Quinn rolled her eyes and gently yanked Rachel to her feet. “I’m buying you dinner,” she said firmly.

\--

They avoided the metaphorical elephant in the room and instead spent dinner talking unkindly about people they didn’t like. They each consumed a few glasses of wine and everything felt like it always had between them.

\--

“Okay,” Quinn said, once they were fed and back at the apartment. “Have all your needs been sufficiently met so we don’t have to prolong this conversation any further?”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Rachel said, hurriedly rushing off. “I’ll be right back.”

Quinn rolled her eyes, wishing she didn’t find Rachel quite so endearing, because, really… _really_ , the brunette was objectively insufferable sometimes.

“You’re insufferable,” Quinn declared with a mixture of annoyance and affection when Rachel returned. “You big baby.”

Rachel had the good grace to look chastened. “Sorry.” She took a deep breath. “Okay, so, what the hell _is_ going on between us?”

“You know what? I have to use the bathroom, too. I’ll be right back.” Quinn scrambled away. She realized she wasn’t particularly ready to have the conversation either.

Rachel watched her leave and worried her lower lip. She anxiously wrung her hands together. This was the conversation she’d put off having for _months_. She’d wanted to put it off in perpetuity. But now there really was no way, was there?

“Let’s pretend it didn’t happen!” Rachel burst out when Quinn stepped one foot back into the living room. “It never happened. We’ll just blame it on the wine we didn’t actually drink, but we’ll pretend we did since we did mutually agree we would pretend alcohol was a motivating factor. That was a very good plan, by the way, and I think I will pretend that any bad decisions not impaired by alcohol actually were impaired by alcohol to make myself feel better. I don’t want anything to change!”

Quinn blinked. “Did you ramble like that in high school because you were drunk all the time? Because looking back on it, that would honestly make a _lot_ of sense.”

Rachel looked outraged. “That would show very poor judgment which we both know that I did not exhibit in high school!”

Quinn pinched the bridge of her nose. “Do you really want to pretend like it didn’t happen?” she asked taking a seat next to Rachel on the couch, but leaving enough space between them to make each of them a little more comfortable.

Rachel was quiet. She was torn. She just didn’t want anything to change. Things were already good the way they were. But God, Quinn could literally make her toes curl with a kiss. “You’re my best friend and I can honestly count the number of friends I have on _one_ hand,” Rachel said quietly. “I just…” she shrugged. “I hate change,” she finally said with a tiny smile. “Things are good and I’m happy.”

“I know,” Quinn said softly. “I’m pretty happy with the way things are, too. This whole thing is completely freaking me out.”

Now that a couple hours had passed, she had _no_ idea where she got the audacity to demand Rachel kiss her. She blushed when she thought about it, but the kiss had been _amazing_ , all that soul-on-fire, synapses misfiring and world-stopping sort of clichés. She didn’t regret it or any of the other equally scorching kiss that came afterward. Kissing didn’t seem like much--everyone over the age of, like, thirteen has done it at least once, so it probably wasn’t even that special. But it _felt_ special.

The whole thing was throwing her for a loop. She had _no_ idea what she was feeling, and the one person she would normally talk to in a situation like this to sort things out and process her feelings was the person making her feel like this in the first place.

Rachel swallowed hard. “It’s completely freaking me out, too.”

“Okay,” Quinn said. “Stop being the girl I kissed and start being my best friend for a moment, okay?”

Rachel looked confused. “Okay.”

“Rachel…”

“Yes?”

“So there’s this girl…”

“Okay…”

“We’ve been friends for a while and I…” Quinn swallowed hard. “I kind of developed feelings for her over the past few months and I think she feels the same way, too.”

Rachel nodded. “I’m very confident she does, too.”

Quinn gave her a small smile. “How can you be so sure?”

“Well,” Rachel said quietly. “You’re great. So I don’t understand how anyone can _not_ like you. You,” Rachel sighed, “you are very appealing.”

“Anyway,” Quinn said softly. “I kissed her tonight, and it was _amazing_.”

“Are you sure _she_ didn’t kiss you?”

Quinn rolled her eyes. “We kissed,” she amended. “And now I don’t know where it’s going to go between us.”

“Well,” Rachel said softly. “What are some of your concerns?”

“Mostly that everything is going to change and that it won’t be a good change and then we’ll stop being friends. She’s my best friend and while I’d never actually admit it to her because of her monstrously enormous ego, she’s actually pretty amazing. I don’t think I could stand it if we stopped being friends.”

“I’ve met your best friend,” Rachel said with a straight face. “She really is pretty amazing. Very amazing, actually.”

“Did I mention her monstrously enormous ego? She’s like, four foot eleven, and four foot ten and three quarters of that is filled with ego. That other quarter inch is filled with breathtaking gullibility and odd literalness”

“I’m 5’2”!” Rachel exclaimed, outraged.

“You’re not 5’2”, though I don’t know why you’re telling me this when we’re talking about that borderline midget girl I like. Focus, Rachel.”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

“So this girl is completely egotistical, but she is my best friend,” Quinn said. “And it would be really devastating if we stopped being friends.”

“Do you…want to date her?”

“I don’t know,” Quinn replied quietly. “I don’t know what I want yet and that’s why we’re so freaked out. Because…that’s how friendships end, right? People can’t figure things out, things drag out, people get frustrated, resentments grow…”

“Yeah….” Rachel said softly.

Quinn swallowed hard. “Do you think she wants to date me?”

“I don’t know,” Rachel said quietly.

Quinn felt a lump rise in her throat. “Are you saying you don’t know because you really don’t know if you want to date me or because you’re still pretending you’re not the girl I’m talking about?”

Rachel laughed softly. “Maybe both.” She crossed her arms and worried her lower lip. “I don’t know what I want. I just know that I want you in my life.” She bit her lower lip and stared at her feet. “I really don’t like change. You’re just so important to me and I really feel like we’re good right now and I don’t want that to change.”

“Change is hard,” Quinn said quietly.

“You’re my best friend,” Rachel said sincerely.”There’s really no other way I can articulate how important you are to me other than to see you’re my best friend. Best friends are rare, you know.”

“I get it,” Quinn sighed. “And you know you’re my best friend, too. I love you and I don’t want things to get so awkward between us that we stop hanging out. I don’t want us to date and then have it go badly. But I don’t want this weird _vibe_ between us forever either. And it’s been there for a while now,” she said. “It’s just that you’ve been gone, so it’s been easier to pretend it’s not there. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”

“Me too,” Rachel said. “And I’ve also had that Queen song stuck in my head for reasons that are obviously completely unmysterious.”

“Which song?”

Rachel looked at Quinn in disbelief. “’Another One Bites the Dust,’” she said sarcastically. She looked outraged. “’You’re My Best Friend,’ of course!” she exclaimed.

Quinn looked amused. “I know,” she said. “I just love making you irate. It’s not so fun being on the other side, is it? When someone is being deliberately obtuse?”

“This is not a quality I enjoy in you.”

“You love it.”

“I love _you_ ,” Rachel corrected. “That’s not quite the same thing as loving the quality in you which relishes making me irate.”

“Then why do you do it to me all the time?” Quinn complained.

“Character defect.”

Quinn rolled her eyes. “Cop-out.”

“Also a character defect.”

Quinn released a bark of exasperated laughter.

“I’ve never kissed another girl before you,” Rachel admitted quietly. “It’s kind of intimidating. I mean, it was _amazing_ ,” Rachel assured quickly. “But this is really intimidating and I hate being intimidated. I just feel like this adds yet another complication to this, and I don’t know how many more complications I can deal with.”

“That’s because you’re a control freak, but we’ve both long accepted this about you.”

“This is true,” Rachel said softly, with a grin. She quickly became serious. “I’m twenty-four, you know,” she said. “I didn’t expect to be twenty-four and dealing with a crisis of sexual orientation.”

Quinn chuckled. “I’m twenty-five and neither did I.”

“Well, it’s not really a crisis,” Rachel said quietly. “I mean, it’s you. It’s not a crisis.”

“No, it’s not, I guess.”

“But it’s something that’s impinging on my mind, you know?”

“Yeah,” Quinn said. “I know. Me too.”

They were quiet for a few minutes.

“ Have you, um, kissed a girl?” Rachel asked softly. “I told you I hadn’t and you didn’t really respond to that.”

“Of course I kissed a girl, Rachel. I went to college.”

“Well, so did I.”

“I’m really not sure how you didn’t then,” Quinn joked.

“I was with Rex all through college,” Rachel pointed out, her voice somber. “I lost my virginity to Finn and then after Finn was Rex. That’s it. That’s my whole history.”

“Oh,” Quinn said, feeling a little chastened for making jokes. “Right,” she said softly. That all made sense.

“Tell me about this girl…girls?” Rachel asked. “That you kissed.”

“Well,” Quinn said. “It was really just one. Regina and I used to make out in bars to get free drinks.”

Rachel looked disapproving. “That doesn’t count. You were using--”

“Please spare me the lecture,” Quinn said wryly. “And it does count because I’ve kissed another girl and you haven’t, even if it was less than noble purposes.”

“How many free drinks did you get?”

“I think I paid for a drink maybe twice during the entire time I was in college. But that’s partly because I met Ethan in college, too. And partly because…you know, I’m very pretty,” Quinn joked.

Rachel rolled her eyes, but she laughed, which was Quinn’s intent.

“So…did you date this girl? Regina?”

“No,” Quinn said. “She and I never dated. We just…you know, kissed now and then.”

“Did you like it?”

“Well, I liked it enough to keep kissing her,” Quinn said dryly.

“Did you like kissing _me_ enough to want to keep kissing me?”

“Yeah,” Quinn said sincerely. “Of course.”

Rachel smiled at her, looking relieved. “Oh,” she said. “Good.”

“Did you like kissing me enough to want to keep doing it?” Quinn asked.

Rachel grinned at her. “Of course I did. It’s just that this is really new for me. I have a hard time adjusting to change.”

Quinn smiled. “We’ve certainly covered that tonight.”

“I mean it though,” Rachel whispered. “I keep saying it because I need you to understand it. I don’t want to mess things up because I am so lamentably inept at adjusting to change. And you know I don’t like challenges that I am not one thousand percent confident I can surmount and while I love you, I’m not one thousand percent confident I can make whatever we’re doing work in such a way that I could keep you.”

“I don’t want to mess things up either,” Quinn said. “I just felt like we couldn’t leave things the way they were.”

“I guess we couldn’t have,” Rachel admitted.

“So where do we go from here?” Quinn asked quietly.

“I don’t know…” Rachel trailed off. “Let’s just keep things slow, okay?”

“Is this your way of telling me you just want to keep things _fun_.”

“This very difficult conversation really isn’t my idea of fun,” Rachel said dryly. “And no. I mean _slow_ as in unhurried. Slow in the sense of deep-time or in terms of evolution, and yes, Quinn, I understand you don’t believe in evolution, but it’s the metaphor I am employing to communicate that I am indicating _pace_ and not any other hidden meaning.”

Quinn let out a tiny amazed chuckle. “I should find you annoying. Why don’t I find you annoying?”

“Because I am ridiculously and deliriously cute and endearing?”

“You’ve got ridiculous and delirious right.”

“I’m going to ignore that given your obvious attraction to me.”

“Swap out obvious for baffling, and you got yourself a deal.”

Rachel smiled. “We’re going to take this slow, right?”

“So slow,” Quinn whispered. She inched closer to Rachel. “We’ll just be friends,” she said. “No promises…”

“No expectations… no demands.”

“Right. The only thing we’ve settled tonight is just that I like you and you like me.”

“Right,” Rachel said. “I like you and you like me,” Rachel echoed.

“And we both hate Barney.”

Rachel chuckled. “Yeah, I hate that stupid purple dinosaur.” She paused and moved closer to Quinn so their thighs touched. “Okay, so we’ll hang out.”

“We already hang out, some would say we hang out excessively.”

“So we’ll hang out even more excessively and introduce previously unknown elements into our hanging out. Like…” Rachel leaned in and kissed Quinn’s neck. Her next word came out in a hot breath against Quinn’s neck. “And…”she kissed the space behind Quinn’s ear. “And…” she kissed Quinn’s collarbone. “Okay?” Rachel asked, pulling her head back and peering at Quinn, gauging the blonde’s reaction.

“Okay,” Quinn managed to breathe out. “That…I…I’m agreeable to that. “ She cupped Rachel’s face. “We’ll go…slowly,” she whispered leaning toward Rachel and bringing their faces very close together.

“Slowly,” Rachel whispered in agreement. Her tongue poked out and licked lazily across Quinn’s lower lip.

Quinn smiled and gently pushed Rachel onto her back. “Slowly,” she murmured, straddling Rachel. She pushed Rachel’s bangs out of her eyes and pressed a kiss to Rachel’s forehead, before kissing Rachel’s nose and moving down to that little groove of skin just above Rachel’s upper lip. “See?” she breathed. “We’re going slow. Like honey,” Quinn whispered before finally bringing her lips to Rachel’s.

Rachel let out a low moan and her arms wrapped around Quinn’s waist, bringing the blonde down even closer to her, wrapping her arms even tighter. One kiss led to another, and then another until Quinn pulled back, her breath coming out in gasps.

Quinn peered down at Rachel and smiled. Rachel smiled back. Quinn traced the pad of her index finger across Rachel’s lip. “Hi, stranger,” she whispered.

“Hi,” Rachel whispered back.

“I’m going to kiss you again, okay?”

Rachel giggled softly. “Are you going to announce it every time you kiss me?”

“We said we were going to take it slowly,” Quinn grinned.

“C’mere,” Rachel said, pulling Quinn down to her again.

\--  



	8. Chapter 8

  
\--  
Quinn reluctantly left LA a week later. She wrapped her arms around Rachel’s waist before they left the apartment for the airport. She rested her forehead against Rachel’s. “Don’t let this smoggy surfer city take you away from me,” she whispered.

Rachel grinned crookedly. “Smoggy surfer city?” she repeated. “You love LA. Why are you being so disparaging?”  
  
“Come home in two weeks when you wrap up, okay?” Quinn said. “Don’t take another role on some other TV show. Come home. New York misses you”

Rachel smiled. “I promise,” she said, sealing her oath with a kiss.

\--

Things between them were deliberately ambiguous-- there was absolutely nothing set in stone, but Quinn greeted Rachel’s return to their city with jubilation.

“Hey you, stranger,” Quinn greeted at the airport.

Rachel beamed at. “Hi stranger,” she said. She dropped her luggage onto the ground and grabbed Quinn into a hug so fierce and tight she practically climbed on top of the blonde.

“I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” Rachel replied softly.

“Let’s go back to your place,” Quinn whispered. “I aired it out and cleaned it so it’d be ready for you. But I’ve been tidying up pretty regularly, so it wasn’t that bad anyway.”  
  
Rachel gave her a small smile. “I just asked you to make sure no one was squatting in it every now and then.”

“I know,” Quinn thought. “But I thought I might have an investment in maintaining it, since I spent so much time there before you left. I was kind of hoping I could spend as much time there now that you’re back.”

“I guess you do have an investment,” Rachel agreed. She linked arms with Quinn. “Let’s go.”

They sat in a cab and held hands the entire ride home.

\--

Quinn thought with Rachel back, things would pick up the pace a little. But after the first month, all they really did was hang out and kiss every now and then. It wasn’t even every time.

They said they would take things slow, but it was just a little too literal for Quinn. And it wasn’t so much the pace-- it was more that Quinn just couldn’t seem to figure out where she stood with Rachel. They talked endlessly about it, but they were both so befuddled that they couldn’t get beyond what they already determined-- that they liked one another and that they wanted to take things slow to make sure they could preserve their friendship.

They determined they weren’t quite dating-- they were ‘hanging out.’

It went so slowly that things just stagnated.

Then in the second month after Rachel’s return, things seemed to regress, rather than just stagnate. Rachel seemed to pull away-- she stopped initiating kisses, started gently rebuffing advances and seemed to have changed her mind about the whole thing. They were still spending most of their free time together, but it was more just as friends

Quinn supposed that was well within Rachel’s right. That was the whole reason they decided to take things as painfully slow as they were-- so that each of them could put the brakes on if things got to be too much.

But Quinn didn’t know where they stood. They weren’t quite dating, they weren’t monogamous, they weren’t even having sex. They were really just doing what they’d always done since they became friends-- they hung out, but now they kissed intermittently. It didn’t seem like much of anything, but Quinn didn’t want to push Rachel because they’d agreed to take things slow.

Quinn didn’t want to ask Rachel if she’d changed her mind and this stagnation and regression was Rachel’s nonverbal way of communicating that she changed her mind. Quinn didn’t want to ask because she was afraid of the answer. Rachel was still sweet and affectionate with her, but Quinn was no longer sure which way that affection ran.

She knew for herself, the more time went on, the more she was sure she wanted Rachel. The more time that passed, she got to know Rachel even more and she realized how much she truly loved Rachel.

But this also meant the risk of losing Rachel and the ensuing hurt went up exponentially the more they spent time together and the deeper she became attached to Rachel. She was more attached to Rachel than ever, and that attachment grew daily. She just couldn’t entertain the possibility of losing Rachel. It wasn’t an option. If things went wrong, they could go _epically_ wrong and Quinn would rather have things the way they were-- despite the discomfort, stagnation and that feeling that it was not quite enough than lose Rachel completely.

So she chose not to confront Rachel about it.

She was despondent, disappointed, tired, afraid and completely freaked out by the situation when she happened to run into Ethan one day while having lunch with a mutual friend. This turned into meeting later for dinner-- initially just to catch up.

Rachel’s time was consumed by a workshop for some new Broadway play and she wasn’t as available anymore. Quinn couldn’t assume that Rachel would have time for her anymore.

She met Ethan for dinner with the intent _just_ to catch up. Ethan was a nice guy and Quinn wanted to entertain the possibility they could one day be friends. After all, the break-up had been fairly amicable.

One glass of wine with dinner turned into four glasses each with a cup of coffee infused with Bailey’s at the end with dessert. She followed him back to his apartment-- he still lived in the same place and it was kind of a comfort that it was still the same.

The bedroom and bed was exactly the same. When he kissed her, she let him. She followed him to the bed and she unbuttoned his shirt and unbuckled his belt and that was all the encouragement he needed.

She was in tears afterward and he was alarmed, solicitous. He was sweet to her and seemed worried and that made her feel even worse. But she knew she shouldn’t have done it, she knew even before she did it that it was wrong, but she did it anyway.

It was just that she needed someone to want her with unambiguous desire. She just needed someone that night and Rachel seemed so unavailable to her lately. But she regretted it because filling the desire to have someone for the night with the wrong person didn’t make anyone feel better.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I shouldn’t have done this,” she told him. “I’m kind of seeing someone.”

He looked disappointed, but whether it was because she was no longer exactly single or if he was disappointed in her due to some morally-fueled outrage, she wasn’t sure. That was one of the reasons she’d broken up with him in the first place-- he always seemed so disappointed in her any time she exhibited any hint of frailty, weakness or foible.

“You said you weren’t really dating anyone.”

“I’m not,” Quinn said. “It’s…it’s really new. I’m not sure where it’s going. We’re not even really dating. We’re just hanging out.”

“Well,” he said, stroking her hair. “You’re only human. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

It was not comforting.

\--

Quinn didn’t see Rachel for another two days, because Rachel was busy. Quinn churned with guilt. She wanted to confess it right away, but it wasn’t the sort of thing she could confess via text message or over the phone. She really wanted to do it in person.

Then Rachel invited Quinn over for a homemade dinner and a movie.

“I ran into Ethan a couple days ago,” Quinn said quietly as they watched _Funny Girl_ together for the countless time.

“Oh, how was he?”

“He’s good,” Quinn said. She paused. She swallowed hard. “I slept with him,” she confessed.

Rachel paused the movie and looked at Quinn. She blinked a few times, but her face was very blank. “Oh,” she said. “Well, that’s your right. It’s not like I’ve laid claim over you as if you’re an acre of land,” she said, her face impassive.

“You’re…not mad?”

“No,” Rachel said. “We’d agreed to take things slowly. We hadn’t even slept together yet, so clearly we were not at a stage in our relationship where there was an expectation of exclusivity.”

“I’m sorry,” Quinn whispered. “It’s just that--”

“Oh” Rachel interjected quickly. “You don’t have to explain. You don’t need to explain or justify yourself to me,” she said. “I get it.”

But Quinn _wanted_ to explain herself, to tell Rachel why she did it, even though she was still kind of trying to figure that out herself.

“But--”

“It’s okay, Quinn,” Rachel said. “Really, there’s nothing to explain. It’s okay. Thank you for telling me, I appreciate your honesty. But let’s just finish watching the movie.”

“Okay,” Quinn said softly, but she was worried because Rachel was way too calm and Rachel’s face was way too _blank_.

They watched the movie for a few more minutes in uneasy silence until Rachel shut it off. “You know, you’re right. I do make you watch this movie too frequently. Let’s watch something else.”

“Okay,” Quinn said quietly, except she hadn’t protested viewing _Funny Girl_ that night unlike most nights because she’d felt too guilty to protest. She wanted to throttle herself for telling Rachel about this while they were watching her favorite movie. She was pretty sure she’d ruined the movie for Rachel.

Rachel switched the TV from DVD mode to TV mode and they watched some truly abysmal movie on cable.

Rachel didn’t touch her for the rest of the night and Quinn was too afraid to try.

And after that, Rachel just seemed to pull away. Slowly at first-- with explanations of long days and late nights spent workshopping, so Rachel couldn’t hang out a couple days out of the week. Then it became a few more days out of the week until finally, it was the entire week.

And then entire weeks went by with no sight of Rachel, and barely a text or phone call. Even when they talked on the phone, the conversations were brief, stilted and hurried and Rachel seemed distant and anxious to get off the phone.

\--

Rachel spent the first few days and weeks after Quinn’s disclosure avoiding the blonde. Part of it was out of necessity-- she was hurt, although she really didn’t feel like she had a right to be, and she just needed some space and time away from Quinn. Part of it was out of desire-- she was upset and she _wanted_ to be away from Quinn. And lastly, part of it was out of safety-- she was hurt and upset enough that she was afraid she would do something stupid and/or irrational and she just wanted to take some time for herself so that she wouldn’t do something stupid and/or irrational.

But Rachel just thought there were less crappy ways for Quinn to communicate a lack of interest in her than to sleep with Ethan.

Rachel wasn’t inconsolably despondent over it or anything-- they’d remained true to their word and so things between them occurred glacially, and they really didn’t have much between them beyond friendship. But it still hurt. She kind of thought they had this unspoken agreement that they were trying to turn their friendship into a relationship and sleeping with other people didn’t seem part of that equation. It seemed dumb to assume that in retrospect, but she’d really wanted to see where things were going between them-- she _liked_ that things were progressing between them and she thought Quinn did, too.

It was totally within Quinn’s right to stop things between them-- that was really the whole point in taking things so slow, but Rachel just thought there was a better way to communicate that.

So she wasn’t despondent-- they were never an official couple, they were never even officially dating-- they were just ‘hanging out’ and so she knew she’d get over it. But she just needed time and space to do it. She’d always felt like there was something unfinished between Quinn and Ethan anyway, and she’d always been a little confused by their break-up, but she’d been too mired in the sadness of her own break-up with Rex to truly pay attention back then. It all made sense to her, but she didn’t want to think about it, she just wanted some space for herself to wallow.

She threw herself into a new project, a new play likely headed for Broadway. She really believed in it and so she devoted nearly every free waking hour to getting the play off the ground. She threw herself into advancing her career-- she took a few guest spots on TV shows here and there-- she spent a week in Vancouver, a few days back in LA, another week in D.C. She worked steadily and she worked hard, because the pursuit of her career had always numbed whatever hurt was brought down on her. She knew that time passed, but she was barely aware of its passage beyond adjusting her wardrobe to the changing weather.

She didn’t realize how much time had really passed since she’d last seen Quinn until she came home late one evening to find Quinn sitting in front of her door, looking despondent and in tears.

She blinked when she realized that Quinn had cut her hair and she couldn’t remember seeing it or hearing about it.

“What’s wrong?!” Rachel asked, when she got close enough to blurt it out. She rushed to Quinn’s side and helped the blonde up. Her eyes and hands roamed over Quinn’s body, instinctively checking for injury. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Did something happen?” she asked, her voice rising because the completely unexpected sight of Quinn at her door, in tears, and looking like her mother just died or like, her puppy was thrown off an overpass or something, completely filled her with panic.

Quinn didn’t reply, just threw her arms around Rachel into a tight hug.

“Are you okay?” Rachel repeated, her feeling of dread and panic rising up even more when Quinn sobbed into her shoulder. “What’s _wrong_? What happened? Talk to me!”

That seemed to reach Quinn because the blonde pulled back and when Rachel got a good look at her, Quinn didn’t look sad anymore, though she still looked upset, she looked _angry_.

Rachel felt a hard slap to her upper arm and she covered her arm with her hand on the spot that Quinn just slapped, rubbing at it and hoping it would take some of the sting out.

“Quinn!” she exclaimed. “While I understand you may be under some kind of emotional duress, there is really no excuse for assaulting me! Come inside and we can talk about--”

“You’re telling _me_ to talk to you?” Quinn shouted. “Are you for real?!”

Rachel was completely bewildered, but she was also acutely aware that if Quinn continued to shout at her in the hallway of her building, the neighbors would yell at them to shut up. Rachel lived for an audience, but not for her private life. Rachel shoved her key into the door and quickly unlocked it, pulling Quinn, who was still ranting, into her apartment.

“I can’t believe you have the _gall_ to tell me to talk to you,” Quinn continued to rant. “When you’ve ignored me for three _months_. Where do you even…”

Rachel’s eyes were wide. Three _months_? And then she ticked off the passage of time in her head. She got back home from LA, that was May. They talked, they started hanging out more and kissing and things were good for a couple months. That was July. Then Quinn slept with Ethan. Then she threw herself into work and it all sort of blurred. She couldn’t really remember how she spent her time other than with work. So she tried to think about the passing time in terms of the weeks of her workshop and the roles she’d taken. And then, to her horror, she realized three months _had_ passed since she last laid eyes on Quinn.

She took issue with Quinn saying she’d ignored the blonde, however, because they’d spoken on the phone just the week before. Or maybe it was two weeks ago. She wasn’t sure. She just knew it was relatively recent though much longer than it should have been and she had to admit it had been an exceedingly brief conversation.

She listened as Quinn continued to rant, but she was really thinking about how so much time could have passed without her noticing. No wonder Quinn was so upset.

“Are you listening to me?!” Quinn demanded because the dazed expression on Rachel’s face might lead one to believe Rachel wasn’t listening.

“I…yes…” Rachel said. “You think I have a lot of gall,” she said, repeating what she heard Quinn say. “I…” she trailed off, flustered. She rubbed her face. “And you think I’ve been ignoring and avoiding you.”

“I don’t _think_ that!” Quinn snapped. “You _have_ been ignoring and avoiding me!”  
  
“I didn’t mean to,” Rachel said weakly. “It just sort of happened that way,” she said lamely.

Once a couple weeks passed by without seeing Quinn, it just got so easy to stay away. She realized she wasn’t even upset or hurt about the thing that pushed her to avoid Quinn in the first place anymore. She’d wanted some time and space and it just sort of ran away from her. When she thought about the past few months, it was frightening to see how easily it was to cut a really important person out of one’s life. No wonder people said relationships took a lot of hard work to maintain.

“How does that just happen?” Quinn demanded.

“I…I got really busy,” Rachel said, a little defensively. “I’m so sorry, I don’t…I don’t know how I did this. I’m so sorry. You have every right to be mad at me.”

Quinn seemed to deflate. “You said you weren’t mad about the Ethan thing,” Quinn whispered.

“I wasn’t mad about Ethan.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said bitterly. “And then right after that, you didn’t want to spend any time with me, you couldn’t wait to get off the phone with me and then you stopped talking to me for weeks at a time. But you weren’t mad.”

Rachel bit her lip. “I wasn’t mad,” she insisted. “I just needed some time and space away from you, and it just kind of got away from me. I didn’t even…I can’t believe it’s been this long.” She rubbed her face in frustration, trying to figure out how she could communicate how it all just ran away from her. “I don’t know how it happened! It’s October and I don’t even know how it got to be October when it still feels like July to me.” She stared at Quinn. “I mean, when did you get your hair cut?”

“Two months ago,” Quinn said softly.

It was such a cliché, she was pretty certain she’d lost Rachel, so she’d changed her hair. She stewed about the situation with Rachel, hoping it could just blow over naturally, but month after month passed and Quinn wasn’t the kind of person who ran away.

“It’s pretty,” Rachel said sincerely. She smiled and twirled a lock of Quinn’s hair around her index finger. “I really like the layers.”

“Thanks…”

“So,” Rachel said. “How are you and Ethan doing?” she asked brightly.

Quinn looked at her blankly. “I’m assuming he’s fine. I, on the other hand, have been better, thanks so much for asking,” she said sarcastically.

“You guys broke up again?” Rachel blurted.

Quinn looked at her in bewilderment. “What are you talking about?”

“Did you break up with Ethan again?” Rachel repeated, enunciating carefully.

“What are you talking about? Why would I break up with him again when we were already broken up? He got the message the first time around.”

Rachel’s forehead furrowed. She was so confused she didn’t know what to say.

“Oh,” Rachel said finally after a few moments of silence. “I just assumed you and Ethan got back together.”

“ _Why_ would you assume that?”

Rachel shrugged. “Why else would you have slept with him again?”

Quinn sighed in exasperation. “I’ve been trying to explain that to you,” she said looking so frustrated that Rachel thought Quinn would scream. “But you wouldn’t give me the chance.”

Rachel looked perplexed. “Oh.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.  
  
Quinn sighed again. “Why do I love you?” she asked rhetorically.

\--

“I felt like you didn’t want to do this anymore,” Quinn said quietly. “I felt like you changed your mind and you were too afraid to tell me. You weren’t kissing me anymore. You didn’t seem like you wanted me. Everything seemed messed up and I kind of freaked out. I just needed someone and he was there. I ran into him and it just kind of happened. But I didn’t get back together with him and I didn’t want _you_ any less.”

Quinn watched Rachel carefully, trying to gauge her reaction. Rachel seemed to really mull this over because her head was slightly tilted to one side and she was biting down on her lower lip.

“I thought you slept with him because you were getting back together with him. I thought _you_ changed your mind,” Rachel said finally.

Quinn cursed softly under her breath. “Why didn’t you just let me explain?”

Rachel shrugged. “I didn’t want to hear why you liked him better than me,” she said weakly. “I mean, I don’t need reasons when someone likes another person more than me.”

“Well, I _don’t_ ,” Quinn said. “But even before I slept with him, I got the impression you’d changed your mind.”

“I didn’t,” Rachel said. “I was just trying to slow myself down. I…” she blushed. “I really like you, you know that.” She paused. “I love you,” she corrected quietly. “We agreed to take things slow and I didn’t trust myself to take things slow. The more time I spent with you, the more I wanted to push for things I didn’t think you were ready for because we were so emphatic about going slowly. I was trying to exercise self-control and I’m sorry that you felt it was…a regression of affection or an unspoken message that I was somehow no longer interested because it was completely the opposite.”

“Oh,” Quinn whispered. She let out a little sad laugh. “I was getting frustrated with how slow things were going.”

“I thought I was making you feel pressured to take things more quickly. I was trying to let you know that you didn’t have to.”

“It was going a little too slow for me.”

“It was going a little too slow for me, too,” Rachel admitted.

“We’re such dummies.”

“I know,” Rachel said quietly.

“I’m really sorry about Ethan,” Quinn whispered.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s really not.”

“I can’t say that I wouldn’t have done something similar,” Rachel murmured. “This has been very confusing for both of us.” She paused. “And we’ve been terrible about communicating.”

Quinn took a deep breath. “So you’re still in this?”

“Yes. Are you?”

“Yes.” Rachel blew out a breath. “I think we need to set some more parameters though.”

“Rachel, I’m fine with setting some parameters, but I swear to God, if you make a chart and a timeline for us, with like projected dates of completion for certain activities and milestones we’re supposed to reach, I’m going to scream.”

Rachel’s cheeks turned bright pink. “I would not have gone that far,” she said, a little affronted by the implication she was that much of a control freak. “I just meant that we give what we’re doing a title-- we’re dating,” she said. “We don’t need to be exclusive yet, though that is the preferred goal. But--”

“I’m okay with being exclusive,” Quinn cut in hurriedly. The thought of Rachel being with someone else made her a little queasy.

Rachel gave her a fond smile. “So am I,” she said softly. “But we couldn’t even commit to saying we were dating before tonight. So let’s not commit to commitment quite yet, okay?”

“Okay,” Quinn said quietly.

“But we’re dating. Okay?” Rachel said. “We’re dating,” she repeated firmly. “Saying we were just hanging out and trying to see where it goes, all of that was, quite frankly, horseshit.”

Quinn stared at Rachel for a moment and then laughed. It wasn’t the funniest thing she ever heard Rachel say, because Rachel was frequently unexpectedly hilarious, but it was still pretty funny. “Okay,” Quinn said with a grin. “We’re dating.”

Rachel beamed at her. “Yes.” She moved closer to Quinn and rose up on the tips of her toes to press a quick kiss against Quinn’s lips. “We’re dating,” she declared once she pulled back and settled flat on her feet again.

A slow smile spread across Quinn’s face and she wrapped an arm around Rachel’s waist and pulled her in. “You’re going to have to do better than that,” she declared fondly before capturing Rachel’s lips with her own.


	9. Chapter 9

 

Despite Quinn’s warning to Rachel not to use charts, graphs and timelines to map out their relationship, Rachel was compelled to do it anyway.

Quinn stared down at the intricate flow chart and promptly folded into quarters, ignoring Rachel’s outraged yelp of protest.

“Quinn, I worked extremely hard on that. It was color coded and--”

“Tonight is our first real date,” Quinn drawled. “Let’s just start with that.”

Rachel looked uncertain. “But we should have guidelines and--”

Quinn took Rachel’s hand. “You, me and our city. This is all we’ll need tonight, okay?”

Rachel smiled. “Okay.”

Quinn passed Rachel back her pamphlets and diagrams. “And yes, Rach. I know we can accessorize, but we haven’t actually had sex yet, so I think you’re getting ahead of yourself.”

Rachel pouted. “I was just making suggestions,” she grumbled, taking them back. “And laying out our options. I can’t believe you won’t even deign to take a look at them. I found them very informative and I am more confident than ever, although, as with everything else in life, this is really a case of putting theory into practice.”

Quinn laughed and gazed at Rachel affectionately. “You and me, it’s all we’ll need tonight,” she said softly.

Rachel beamed at her. “Yeah.”

 

\--

Rachel wasn’t sure why they spent so much time being reclusive when they were together because it was a _lot_ of fun to go out. She almost forgot how much fun it was to go out, which was sort of strange considering that she and Rex used to out all the time. They were always out and about, whether it was at parties, clubs, bars or at the park or the beach.

But with Quinn, they’d generally stayed in and now Rachel wondered if Hannah was right about them-- they were some really old, antisocial couple with complementary personality disorders because she realized they’d stayed in _way_ too much.

The simple act of going to a concert, screaming along to the songs with everyone else, becoming sticky from sweat with her bangs plastered to her forehead, Quinn’s hand gripped in hers or Quinn’s arm wrapped around her waist-- all of it was just _amazingly_ fun.

She pulled Quinn into a private corner without many street lights and pressed Quinn against a wall after exiting the Bowery Ballroom. It wasn’t the first concert she attended with Quinn. It wasn’t even the first concert at Bowery Ballroom, but it was their first concert as part of couple officially dating. It just felt so different.

“Why,” she queried, “did we stay in so much when going out is so much fun?” she breathed leaning up on tip toe to kiss Quinn. She was glad that it was dark and private-- they were on a public street but no one was paying any attention to the which made her feel like the world was theirs.

They kissed languidly for a few minutes, hidden from sight. Quinn pulled away and grazed Rachel’s nose with her own. “I like the idea of having you to myself though,” she murmured.

Rachel smiled. “I like that idea, too,” she murmured. She kissed Quinn’s neck, smiling against the skin when she heard and felt Quinn release a soft gasp. “Do you want to go back to my place?”

Quinn cupped the side of Rachel’s neck. “You’re kind of forward for a first date, aren’t you?” she joked.

Rachel’s cheeks turned pink and she ducked her head, pulling away from Quinn. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to rush you or--”

“Rachel,” Quinn murmured. “I’m kidding. Let’s go.”

\--

Rachel fumbled with the key to her front door, giggling because Quinn was playfully poking her in the ribs.

“What’s wrong with you that you can’t open a simple door?” Quinn teased. “Are you mentally challenged? Is that why you dressed like that in high school?”

Rachel giggled and swatted Quinn away which made the blonde grab Rachel around the waist and blow a raspberry against Rachel’s cheek. Rachel squealed and tried to push Quinn away just as she got the door open. They stumbled into the apartment, giggling.

Rachel shut the door and looked at Quinn wryly. “You brute!”

Quinn laughed. “Come here,” she ordered pulling Rachel by the hand.

It started with a kiss, her lips against Rachel’s. But the sound of Rachel’s moans and pleased sighs emboldened Quinn even further and they drifted from front door to couch to hallway to doorway of the bedroom before finally reaching the bed. Her hands reached under Rachel’s skirt before just unzipping it and pulling the garment off.

Soon they were undressed and pressed against each other. Quinn hovered above Rachel, one of her legs tucked in between Rachel’s legs. She could feel how much Rachel wanted this, could feel how wet and willing Rachel was against her thigh. She gazed down at Rachel and everything seemed so perfect. She traced one of her hands down the side of Rachel’s neck-- the skin was so soft, so smooth, so _perfect_. She ran her hand down slowly, memorizing every texture. She ran her hand slowly across the curve of Rachel’s shoulder and then along the side of Rachel’s breast feeling the slight swell before she ran her hand down Rachel’s rib cage and touched Rachel’s stomach.

“This is happening, right?” Quinn asked. “You’re not going to change your mind?”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “This is the sort of question which can ruin a moment were it to occur with regularity, but given that this is our first time together, I will permit the question _Yes_ , Quinn. This is happening and no, I am not changing my mind.”

Quinn was simultaneously relieved and annoyed. “I was just making sure,” she said, a little crankily. But she was definitely relieved Rachel had no plans to change her mind. She planned on somehow getting Rachel back for that ‘ruining the moment’ comment.

\--

Things were hesitant and slow at first, but they each soon found their bravery. Quinn shivered as Rachel gently kissed each one of her fingers.

“Your hands are so beautiful,” Rachel whispered reverently. “They’re so perfect.”

Quinn palmed Rachel’s cheek with one of her hands. “No, they aren’t,” she muttered.

Rachel turned her head and kissed the center of Quinn’s palm. “Yes, they are. Your hands are so perfect. They’re elegant.” Rachel sighed softly. “Like you.” She brought her lips close to Quinn’s ear. “I can’t wait until they’re inside me,” she murmured, her breath tickling Quinn’s earlobe.

Quinn’s cheeks turned pink. She tried to stutter out a response, but found she couldn’t. But she decided not to keep Rachel waiting and her hands moved down to cup delicate flesh. She felt Rachel twitch, heard Rachel inhale sharply.

“It’s okay,” Quinn found herself saying. “Just relax.”

“I _am_ relaxed,” Rachel muttered.

They were face to face and eye to eye and there was nothing in between them but their own skin. Quinn pushed three fingers inside Rachel, grinning when she felt how easily they slipped in and how Rachel moaned. Their mouths came together in a crushing kiss. Their tongues moved in tempo with Quinn’s fingers and Quinn felt Rachel become wetter, heard her become breathier, her moans became louder.

Quinn pulled her mouth away from Rachel’s greedily searching lips. “Still think we need to accessorize?” she teased as her fingers continued to move.

Rachel gave her a look. It was almost cheated. But then her eyes were begging. “Please,” Rachel pleaded. “I don’t want any accoutrements, I just want you. All I need is you. Fuck. I just want you.”

Quinn dropped her head to rest her forehead against Rachel’s shoulder. “Accoutrements,” she repeated, laughing softly. “God, I love you, baby.” She gently sucked at Rachel’s neck as her fingers continued to move and Rachel continued to release harsh gasping moans. “Accoutrements,” she repeated again. “I’m going to make sure you’re incoherent.”

Quinn’s hand pistoned against Rachel and she felt Rachel tighten and clench and then there was this wet heat covering her hand and Rachel’s hoarse scream was muffled by their mouths coming together in a kiss that was almost violent as they lips collided

“Oh fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” Rachel whispered in a babble. “Fuck. I…I…” she trailed off. “Fuck.”

Quinn breathed heavily, and she was trying to catch her breath, but she couldn’t resist a smirk. .

Rachel released a few harsh gasps, trying to catch her breath and they were quiet as she lay on her back with Quinn still pressed on top of her. Rachel took another calming breath and then she grinned and flipped Quinn onto her back, reversing their positions before Quinn even realized what happened.

“What…whoa…I…”

“Shut up,” Rachel said softly smiling down at her. “Just trust me, beautiful.

Rachel kissed her and Quinn was open and eager. The kiss scorched her and decimated all remaining trepidation, fear or timidity. She wasn’t afraid of being embarrassed or rejected or just not good enough. It just took a kiss and for Rachel to brush a lock of slightly damp hair from her sweaty forehead.

“God, look at you,” Rachel whispered, her voice awed. “You’re beautiful.”

“I’m really not,” Quinn murmured.

“You are,” Rachel assured and then Rachel was kissing her again.

\--

Quinn lost track of everything that happened that night. All she knew was that there were very few parts of her flesh that Rachel didn’t taste or tease and when they were finally exhausted, they were lying in a heap on the floor, the bed sheets completely ripped off the bed.

“We needed to change the sheets anyway,” Quinn said, one of her hands absently drifting downward to touch herself between her legs. She blushed when she realized her hands were sticky with her own warmth. She could almost feel Rachel’s fingers still moving inside her, Rachel’s mouth still licking and sucking while Rachel’s fingers toyed with her. The memory made her smile.

“Let me help you with that,” Rachel murmured, bringing Quinn’s fingers to her lips and then sucking on them. She stroked Quinn’s face. “I can’t believe I slept with you on the first date. I don’t really have a problem with it in theory, but it’s sort of a matter of principle.”

Quinn snorted. “Rachel, you’ve slept with three people including me. So really, it’s kind of moot.”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “I still can’t believe I slept with you on the first date and _I_ was the one who bought _you_ dinner.”

Quinn grinned at her. “I’ll buy you breakfast,” she offered.

Rachel laughed softly. “It’s a deal.”

\--

Firsts.

Firsts were always important to Rachel and now in her relationship with Quinn, each first seemed worthy of documenting.

“Rachel, I swear, if you take a picture of me and put it in a scrapbook or something, I’m going to make you _eat_ it.”

Rachel was disapproving. “Quinn, non-food items do not have nutritive value, and in fact, regular consumption of non-food items constitutes a disorder called pi--”

“Put the camera down, Berry.”

Rachel lowered the camera and pouted. “But you aren’t naked anymore.”

Quinn didn’t bother opening her eyes again. “Come back to bed. I miss your body warmth. You’re my own personal furnace.”

Rachel put the camera on the nightstand. She _supposed_ she didn’t _have_ to document their first morning-after-their-first-time, but it really would have been nice. She crawled back into bed and heaved a deep mournful sigh as she curled next to Quinn.

Quinn heaved an equally deep sigh, though it was more of the exasperated variety. “One picture. And make sure it’s flattering.”

Rachel beamed and sat up to grab the camera. Quinn was still laying on her stomach, her face half buried into pillow.

“You only get one try,” Quinn said.

“But you said one picture,” Rachel protested. “And you insisted that it be flattering. What if the first one isn’t a good one and--”

“One. So make it count.”

“Fin,” Rachel sighed. She looked down at Quinn who was still trying to go back to sleep, and smiled. She held the camera up, hunkered down next to Quinn and took a picture. She hoped for the best.

When she looked at it, Rachel saw that she and Quinn were perfectly positioned within the frame. Quinn still on her stomach with her eyes closed and looking annoyed, but more or less peaceful. Rachel was facing the camera, pointing it toward herself and Quinn and beaming into the camera. It was good enough and flattering for both of them which Rachel took as a sign that she was meant to do it.

Later, she printed out the picture and saved it in a drawer next to the receipt from their dinner together the night before-- their first date dinner and the ticket stubs from the concert-- their first concert together as a couple officially dating.

This drawer soon became full of mementos and reminders of their firsts as a couple--the receipt from their first breakfast together, the stubs from their first movie, a flower which was separated from the rest of an apology bouquet and dried and saved in the aftermath of their first fight.

It had been a very long time since there were firsts in a relationship for Rachel and she’d forgotten how many of them there truly were-- first shower together, first time taking the other person for granted, first time inadvertently hurting the other person’s feelings, first time deliberately hurting the other person’s feelings, first time seeing that person made a bad day completely forgettable, first time having loads of drunken sex, first vacation together, first time making plans under the assumption of being together in the near future, first time making plans under the assumption of being together in the distant future and the first assumption of ‘what’s mine is yours and yours is mine.’

It wasn’t as though every day brought forth new firsts-- that was just impossible. But she was surprised how many firsts there could be with a woman she’d known since middle school and with whom she’d been close friends with for well over a year before they began dating.

Even the things they’d done together as friends like meals, concerts, shopping and going on vacation felt new when they did them as a couple.

She just knew that there would be so many other firsts to come, and she was looking forward to discovering them.

\--

Things progressed the way they were supposed to and soon Quinn found herself apoplectic at the idea of Rachel considering herself still “technically on the market.” Neither of them were dating anyone else, but Rachel evidently felt the need to periodically announce that they were each ‘technically on the market.’

Quinn did not want there to be any technicalities. She did not appreciate technicalities unless they were in direct benefit to her, and did not believe this particular technicality would be in her favor, should it ever be utilized.

So she worked out a plan-- a homemade dinner, some champagne, a night spent in, just the two of them to offset all the nights out they’d had lately.

She had it all planned out, and she planned to be so charming and endearing, no one in his or her right mind would be able to refuse her.

Of course, not all things went according to plan.

\--

When Rachel first asked Quinn to get the epi pen out of her purse, Quinn thought she was joking. But Rachel did not look good and the look of fear and panic made Quinn scramble for Rachel’s purse, dump its contents on the ground and grab the lifesaving epi pen. She plunged it into Rachel’s thigh and then called the paramedics, holding Rachel’s trembling hand and whispering apologies as they waited.

\--

Neither of them had a car and Quinn didn’t want Rachel to have to go home in some smelly cab, so she called Hannah who did have a car to pick them up.

“I can’t believe you poisoned Rachel,” Hannah said as they stood outside the privacy curtain while Rachel spoke quietly with a kindly ER doctor.

“I didn’t mean to,” Quinn said morosely. I was trying to make this night special.”

Hannah looked at her skeptically. “What is so special about it? You two holing up in your apartment like a couple of hermits? Isn’t that what you do almost every day?”

Quinn pouted. She glanced at the curtain and heard Rachel and the doctor still talking from behind it. She leaned in toward Hannah. “I was going to ask Rachel to be my girlfriend and be exclusive with me.”

Hannah burst into raucous laughter and Rachel and the doctor paused.

“What’s so funny?” Rachel called out, her voice still sounded weak, but she also sounded curious and amused.

Hannah opened her mouth to speak and Quinn held up her fist and shook it in Hannah’s face. “Shut up! Don’t say anything or I’ll kill you!” she hissed quietly at Hannah.

Hannah laughed again, clearly unimpressed with the threat. “Rach, Quinn wants to--”  
Quinn ‘s eyes widened in horror. She couldn’t ask Rachel this question now. She grabbed Hannah by her scarf and pulled harshly, ignoring the way Hannah yelped and scowled. She brought Hannah toward her and wrapped her forearm around the back of Hannah’s neck. “Shut up!” she hissed.

“What’s going on, guys?” Rachel asked and she sounded exhausted. “Han, what does Quinn want?”

Quinn warningly shook her fist in Hannah’s face again

Hannah sighed. “Quinn wants to know if you want a stuffed animal from the hospital gift shop.”

Rachel laughed softly. “No, but maybe a red balloon.”

“Okay!” Quinn exclaimed.

Hannah Harper laughed as Quinn Fabray scampered off and came back with a bunch of red balloons. Rachel laughed softly when she saw them and she tied one around her wrist and distributed the rest to a few of the waiting children around the Emergency Room when she was finally discharged.

Quinn sat with Rachel in the backseat of Hannah’s car, feeling _terrible_. Rachel’s head rested on her shoulder and Quinn stroked her hair as Rachel closed her eyes and tried to sleep on the short car ride home.

Hannah peeked into the rearview mirror, intermittently staring at them and smirked.

Quinn scowled at her and raised her index finger to her lips and then curled her hand into a fist and shook it at Hannah in warning.

Hannah laughed softly.

Hannah pulled in front of Rachel’s building even though Quinn’s apartment was closer because Rachel muttered something about wanting to sleep in her own bed. Hannah watched as Quinn helped Rachel out of the car, the blonde’s shoulders slumped dejectedly. Quinn and Rachel walked into the building, a red ribbon still tied around Rachel’s waist.

Hannah laughed again, this time alone in the privacy of her car. She laughed so hard, she bent over, her forehead touching the steering wheel.

It wasn’t _really_ funny, considering Rachel had gone into anaphylactic shock, but it was also kind of hilarious.

\--

“I’m sorry,” Quinn said miserably once they returned to Rachel’s apartment from the Emergency Room.

Rachel still looked ill. “It’s okay, Quinn. I know you didn’t know I was allergic to pine nuts.”

Quinn pouted. This was not the evening she had planned. She wanted this night to be special and now hardly seemed the time to ask Rachel to be exclusive with her considering she’d induced anaphylaxis and nearly killed Rachel. Thank the Lord for epi pens.

“Quinn, I’m going to lay down for a while. Why don’t you just go home?” Rachel suggested. “I don’t want to waste your entire evening.”

The blonde’s lower lip morosely jutted out. “You want me to go home?” she asked quietly, and really, she couldn’t blame Rachel. After all, she’d nearly killed Rachel, but it was really with the best of intentions.

“Well, I don’t _want_ you to go home. I’m just tired and want to go to sleep for a while.” Rachel’s smile was indeed very tired. She held her hand out. “Do you want to take a nap with me?”

“Okay,” Quinn said quietly, reaching for Rachel’s hand.

They walked into the bedroom together and laid down on the bed with Quinn being the big spoon to Rachel’s little spoon. Quinn wrapped her arms around Rachel, and pulled the brunette in, holding her as tightly as she could.

Rachel seemed relaxed for a few minutes but then began to squirm away.

“Quinn, as much as I enjoy feeling your body against mine, it’s very difficult for me to sleep when you are crushing my rib cage,” she joked gently.

Quinn released a choked laugh which was half-sob, half chuckle. “I’m so sorry,” she said, apologizing for the twentieth time at the very least. She loosened her grip on Rachel. “I’m so sorry. I really wanted tonight to be special. I wanted to impress you and I was just trying that new recipe. I didn’t want it to turn out like this.”

“Quinn, I know that. It’s okay. I really should have told you my allergy. I’m also a little lactose intolerant, although not too badly, just so you know. Not that it really matters since I don’t eat dairy anyway.”

“I just wanted tonight to be memorable and special.”

“Well, now it is,” Rachel joked. “Now relax and let me sleep, okay?”

“Okay.”

Quinn was wide awake, but she felt Rachel drifting off as they lay there for a while in silence. She kissed Rachel’s neck. “I’m so glad you’re okay, baby,” she whispered.”I don’t know what I would have done if I…” her voice caught. “I’m so sorry I hurt you.”

“It’s okay,” Rachel murmured. “I’m fine. You didn’t hurt me. I’m much tougher than you think.”

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Quinn whispered again. She was _so_ glad.

“Mmm, I’m glad I’m okay, too,” she joked softly. She sighed. “I’m glad you’re still here. You feel so good,” she mumbled contentedly. She was quiet for a while and when she spoke again a few minutes later, she sounded drowsy. “What was so special about tonight anyway?”

“It’s stupid now,” Quinn said quietly. “You’re not going to want to do it.”

Rachel laughed softly, and she still sounded sleepy. “If it’s sexual in nature, you’re going to have to wait a few hours, but I would be happy to do anything you wish once I’m more alert.”

Quinn laughed softly. “It’s not sexual in nature. But I’m totally going to remember that.”

“Then what was it?” Rachel prompted sleepily. “Hurry up and tell me before I fall asleep.”

“I wanted to ask if you’d consider dating only me,” Quinn admitted. “It seems kind of farfetched now, doesn’t it? Considering I almost killed you.”

Rachel was quiet for a moment. “It doesn’t seem so farfetched,” she said. “It seems like a good plan to me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Rachel said with a yawn. “I’m reasonably certain there is no one else in the world I would like to date other than you and obviously I cannot fathom why you would find anyone more appealing than me.”

Quinn rolled her eyes.

“So let’s do it,” Rachel said. “I will only date you, and you will only date me.”

Quinn laughed. “Hey. What’s this thing about me only dating you?” she joked. “I just want _you_ to only date _me_.”

Rachel laughed and elbowed Quinn. “You’re a terrible person.”

“I am,” Quinn agreed. She kissed Rachel’s neck. “Of course I’ll only date you,” she whispered. “You’re the only one I want.”

Rachel laughed softly. “You don’t know how hard I’ve worked to make that happen,” Rachel mumbled, clearly drifting off. She sighed softly. “I’m very glad. Now let me sleep,” she half-whined. She leaned back slightly so she could burrow closer to Quinn. As she drifted off into sleep, Rachel wondered what it said about her that she just agreed to be exclusive with the girl who’d accidentally poisoned her just a few hours before.

She could acknowledge that it probably said nothing good, but she didn’t care.

\--

Rachel genuinely adored Hannah, but at the moment, sitting across a dinner table from Hannah with Hannah smiling that triumphant smirk, Rachel wanted to beat her.

“Why are you smiling like that?” Quinn asked rudely before Rachel could.

Hannah’s grin only broadened. “It’s always a happy occasion when two friends finally work through their profound denial and finally admit they’re in love with one another. I knew this would happen, but I thought you two idiots would be telling me this in like, fifty years, after each of you had a bad marriage and a contentious divorce under your belts.”

Rachel and Quinn scowled.

Quinn thought about all the times Hannah manufactured a reason for the three of them to hang out, only to bail out early. She looked at Hannah thoughtfully. “Were you trying to set us up all those times you’d get us to hang out and then you’d leave?”

Hannah rolled her eyes. “Of course I was. You guys always kind of reminded me of one another, even before I found out you were both from Ohio and hid in bathtubs and already knew each other.”

“But we were both dating other people at the time!”

Hannah shrugged. “Well, are you still dating them now? No, you are not. Now you’re dating each other. And anyway, Rex was too old for you and he acted more like a dad to you than a boyfriend,” she said, looking at Rachel. Then she looked at Quinn. “And Ethan was just not right for you. I really thought you guys belonged together and you have no idea what sort of machinations I’ve plotted out if you didn’t get together. And while we’re on that topic, what is wrong with you people? You guys are fucking _glaciers_. If it were me, I would have already filed my marriage license and I’d be knocked up right now. You two are _finally_ celebrating being exclusive like you’re fourteen year olds.”

Quinn and Rachel scowled at her, though they were sufficiently chastised. Quinn leaned in and whispered in Rachel’s ear. “First time we’re going to stick a friend with the bill.”

Rachel’s lips curved into a slow grin and turned her head to gaze at Quinn and chuckle. “Yes.”

\--

“Do you think Hannah was right about us moving too slow?” Rachel asked timidly.

Quinn smiled fondly. “Hannah’s never right about anything,” she joked.

She knew Rachel would always care too much about what other people thought, but she also knew that Rachel would always be true to herself, too. Rachel may care too much about the opinions of others who didn’t matter and she may internalize their criticisms way too much, but Quinn also knew that she could count on Rachel to ultimately do what was right for her, and as long as Rachel did what was right for her, Quinn was okay with anything.

“I know,” Rachel said. She smiled wryly. “I guess what I’m really asking is do _you_ think we’re moving too slow.”

Quinn cupped Rachel’s face in her hands. “I think,” she drawled, peering into Rachel’s eyes, “that our pace is just right.”

Rachel gave her a wide smile. “Okay,” she said softly.

Quinn hugged Rachel tightly and kissed the top of the brunette’s head. “Stop worrying so much,” Quinn whispered. “We’re going to be fine. It doesn’t matter if we go too slow or we go too fast, it’ll all be perfect. You’re so high anxiety, but there’s no reason to be. _We’re_ going to be fine,” Quinn said firmly.

Rachel laughed softly. “I know,” she murmured. “It’s just…” she chuckled lowly. “I used to be a part of a family of three, and now I’m not. I used to think Rex and I would start a family eventually and I was happy because he was my best friend and now I don’t even talk to him. I’m not so sure I can take history repeating itself and I lose another person I love.” Rachel took a deep breath and though she laughed, her voice shook. “That would really suck.”

“It’s not going to happen,” Quinn said.

“Are you making me promises you can’t keep?” Rachel teased but her voice sounded stuffy and nasal.

“I’m not making you any promises,” Quinn said softly. “But you and I aren’t going to live like that. We’re not going to be scared, okay?” She took a few steps back and interlaced their fingers. She brought her face close to Rachel’s and the tips of their noses touched. “We work, Rachel,” she said softly. “We _work_ ,” she repeated quietly.

“Okay,” Rachel said softly.

“Things are going to be so good, even better than they are now.”

“And things are already pretty good,” Rachel added quietly.

“Yeah,” Quinn whispered. “You’ll see how good it’ll be.”

“Okay,” Rachel whispered back.

\--

There were a series of more ‘firsts’ after that-- the first truly serious, almost frightening fight which erupted over Rachel’s refusal to go to Lima with Quinn to celebrate Christmas with her family.

After losing her fathers, Rachel planned never to return to Lima and she kept that promise to herself for years.

“Don’t you understand it’s important to me that you come home with me? Christmas is about family and you’re part of my family now!”

“And don’t _you_ understand that I never want to go back there?”

In the end, Rachel went back and though it was hard for her to return, particularly when she and Quinn drove down the stretch of highway where she’d lost her fathers, she had no regrets. She wanted to be part of a family again, and now she was.

\--

Sometimes Rachel woke up in the middle of the night believing that the last few years were all a dream and she was still that kid in high school whose fathers had just died and who got Slushied in the face by Dave Karofsky on her first day back at school after taking a week off from school to deal with her fathers’ death in private. She woke up, a little shaky and half-expected Nelson Muntz to point and “ha ha” at her. She woke with her hands groping for Quinn and she felt a familiar span of skin and cuddled close. She was always reassured when she had Quinn in her arms. She breathed in the scent of Quinn’s hair and skin until she fell asleep again, knowing that it was all real, knowing that she really did have everything she ever wanted and she was now even getting things she never thought she could have.

She’d only had three serious relationships in her life. Finn, Rex and Quinn.

She wasn’t particularly experienced. In fact, she’d only meaningfully kissed _four_ people in her life when it wasn’t in front of a camera: Finn, Noah, Rex and Quinn.

But even as inexperienced as she truly was (three relationships in her entire life), she knew it didn’t matter.

It was Quinn. For her, it was Quinn and it would _always_ be Quinn.

She knew she wasn’t an easy person to be with. She knew she was frustrating and had limitations and unreasonable fears. She still wanted things too much and was still plagued by fears she’d lose it all, but she was also secure in the fact that she loved Quinn and Quinn loved her.

She knew early on in their courtship that Quinn was the one for her, but each passing day was additional proof.

\--

Sometimes Quinn wondered how she could have fallen in love with Rachel Berry. Rachel was annoyingly cheerful most of the time, but she also had her lows and dear _God_ , her lows were low. Quinn felt inept and inadequate because when Rachel got that way, nothing she did could cheer Rachel up, whereas Rachel had never failed to cheer her up. Rachel could get moody and distant and her continual inability to _truly_ communicate was concealed by a vast vocabulary and big lung capacity. There was no one else on earth who could annoy the shit out of her more than Rachel.

But God, how she loved that woman.

It was unnerving, really, how much Rachel had consumed her life. It was unnerving how _okay_ with it Quinn was.

It didn’t take long for Quinn to know what she wanted, at least when it came to Rachel. But she took her time-- not because she wasn’t sure. She was _sure_ , but because taking her time was half the joy of being with Rachel, with being with _anyone_ really.

\--

Eventually the little “firsts” in a relationship like the first time they used the bathroom in front of each other or the first time they were so mad at each other that they had to sleep apart diminished in frequency. Rachel and Quinn sort of missed it until they were replaced by big “firsts” in a relationship-- first day of cohabitation, first day of living in their first house, first day as a married couple, and first day of being parents for the first time.

It all seemed to happen so quickly, but Quinn could remember and savor the moments, big and small, important and not-so important.

Rachel pulled Quinn in for a kiss after coming home from dropping their daughter off on the first day of kindergarten.

“Stop crying, you big baby,” Rachel chided. “I stopped crying fifteen minutes ago.”

Quinn wiped at her eyes. “Shut up,” she said. “I’m _not_ still crying.”

(But she totally was. That was her baby she sent off into that classroom! Even if little Grace had totally traipsed into that classroom without a second glance at her sobbing mothers.)

Rachel laughed softly. She wrapped her arms around Quinn’s waist. “I love the boots you’re wearing,” she whispered in Quinn’s ear. “They are so hot. _You’re_ so hot.” She smiled. “It’s all you, baby.” She kissed Quinn’s neck.

Quinn chuckled. “You’re just trying to curry favor because you know I’m mad at you for mocking me.”

“This is true,” Rachel acknowledged. “Is it working?” she asked, gently biting Quinn’s earlobe.

“Yes,” Quinn admitted grudgingly.

Rachel threw her head back and laughed.

Quinn knew she would delight in that sound for as long as she lived.

“Did you know,” Rachel drawled, “that you are the first and last person I was ever sure I wanted to marry?”

“Yes,” Quinn said wryly. “It was in our marriage vows.”

Rachel grinned. “Do you forgive me for mocking you?” she asked with a tiny little pout meant to cajole Quinn into mercy.

Quinn smiled back. “No,” she joked.

Rachel pouted again.

Quinn laughed and hugged Rachel tighter. “I love you, it’s okay,” she murmured.

Rachel grinned. “You got some time for me before you have to go to work?” she asked softly.

Quinn’s lips curved into an affectionate smile. “I could even call in sick.”

Being the in-house counsel for Crosley Asset Management was exactly as un-glamorous as it sounded, but it did afford her the ability to take a sick day to spend with her girl. This wasn’t the life she thought she’d have when she was four, fourteen or even twenty-four. It was like she was on some road and then took a detour to take the scenic route and got completely lost without a map to guide her back. But where she ended up was so better than from where she came and better than where she’d been headed.

Even now Rachel was still a detour she had no map to navigate, but she thanked God for that unplanned detour. Because she was _exactly_ where she wanted to be, and had _exactly_ what she wanted.

When it came to Rachel and their life together, she knew it would be easier to have a map, some sort of guide to tell them where to go and how to get there. God knew Rachel was the sort of person who needed everything meticulously planned out. But if their lives had gone the way they’d originally planned, they wouldn’t be together and so Quinn hoped they never had a map to guide them because she knew they’d guide each other.

The End

 


End file.
